Wasting Away Again in Sequesterville
by Person4
Summary: Duncan and Courtney finally meet up again, but things don't go as smoothly as he would have hoped. With only a short time before they get released back into the real world, can things get back to the way they were? Now complete!
1. Can't Wait To See You Again

By the time the boat finally reached the Playa Des Losers resort, Duncan was sincerely contemplating stabbing Chef until the blade of his knife snapped. On the one hand, now that he'd been voted out it wasn't like it mattered if production kicked him out for assaulting the staff. On the other, he'd been waiting to see Courtney again for over a month and didn't really want to get tossed back in Juvie before he had the chance to.

He knew that the guy he'd been when he'd first shown up at Camp Wawanakwa would have been ticked off at what a giant pussy he'd become for there to be a question to begin with, and wouldn't even have _believed_ how easily he decided against giving Chef what he had coming for keeping up his stupid mask trick long, _long_, after the initial shock had worn off. But the guy he'd been when he'd first gotten there had had no idea what he was missing out on. He settled for shooting Chef his best death glare as the man yanked off the latest mask of his own face and said through gritted teeth, "_Give it up_ already, man. It got old after the first minute."

Chef's only response was moving on to the next mask. Luckily by then the other shore and the building on it were in view, and Duncan could turn his focus to it. It wasn't like his knife would do much good anyway, not in the state that idiot had left it after swiping it for the day.

DJ and Geoff were waiting the greet him on the dock when they reached it, but he didn't pay much attention to them. It wasn't like it was bad to see the guys or anything, but they really weren't who he'd been waiting for. "Hey guys," he said as he grabbed his duffel bag and hopped ashore. "Where's Princess?"

DJ laughed in a way that would've been obviously forced if Duncan had actually been paying any real attention. "Funny you should ask about her--" he started, before Duncan cut him off.

"Forget about it, I should be able to find her pretty fast." He started walking into the main resort complex, not even really noticing the luxury around him.

"Whoa man, hold up!" Geoff said, he and DJ following close behind Duncan. "You _really_ don't want to do this right now."

Duncan spared him enough attention to shoot an annoyed glance his way. "Okay, I know you guys must be glad to see me again after being stuck with all of those losers for a couple of weeks, but waiting an extra hour or two to catch up isn't gonna kill you. Getting in my way when I'm trying to see my... the girl who digs me _just might_."

"Look, we're just trying to warn you--" DJ tried, but then Duncan caught sight of the back of a familiar head of chestnut hair on the other side of the main courtyard and it was too late.

"Courtney, babe!" he called out, picking up his pace. He knew he'd have to do some damage control later to make sure every one else within hearing distance forgot how eager he sounded and didn't think for a _second_ that he might be some sort've mushy idiot deep down inside, but for a moment he didn't really give a damn what they thought. If he had remained as aware of the impression he was having on the people around him as he usually did he might have noticed the way her shoulders stiffened when she heard his voice. As it was, he didn't notice any hints that things between them weren't still exactly the way they had been the last time they'd seen each other as he reached out to put his hand on her shoulder, saying as he did so, "Miss me, Princess?"

On the boat ride over he'd imagined a whole bunch of different scenarios for how she'd act when she saw him. Most of them contained plenty of making out. None of them involved her spinning around the second he touched her and slapping him _way_ harder than he'd have thought somebody with her skinny arms could, leaving him gaping at her dumbly.

"You slept with Heather, you _jerk!_" she yelled at him, her hands balling into fists as her sides like she was mentally debating whether or not to move her abuse up to an actual punch.

He was so blind-sided by the sudden attack that for a few seconds his mind didn't even know where to start responding to the accusation. Luckily his mouth was perfectly capable of defending him against such a ridiculous claim without any input from his thoughts at all. "What the hell are you talking about, Princess? I've never slept with _anyone_!"

Just as luckily for his pride, if nothing else, his brain was still too occupied to be paying attention exactly what his mouth had just admitted.

"Uh, dude, she means literally," DJ hissed at Duncan in a stage-whisper from where he and Geoff were still hanging around behind him.

Duncan's brain finally snapped to that morning, when he'd woken up to find his map had vanished after he'd fallen asleep with Heather leaning against him. "Oh! How the hell do you already know about that?"

Courtney's eyes narrowed and she looked angrier than he'd ever seen her. "You're not even going to _try_ making up excuses? Or, you know, _apologizing?_"

"That was just strategy! I knew I needed to suger up _one_ of those girls to have a chance of beating Owen if we lost out on immunity. Those two crazy bitches hate way each other too much to join a three-person allience together, so I worked on the one who'd need my help more and hoped for a tie!"

"She had her _hands_ down your _pants_"

"I was asleep! And she was just stealing the stupid map!" For just a second the thought that he didn't actually know what the hell she'd done when he was sleeping crossed his mind, and he shuddered. "...God, I really hope she wasn't trying to do anything else. You really think I'd ever _want_ that crazy harpy to touch me? You oughta know you're the only one I--" All at once he realized just how public this argument was, and how obvious all the other booted contestants were being about listening in, and he cut himself off before he could say anything he really wouldn't want an audience for. He lowered his voice to a tone he hoped only she would be able to hear and reached out to try grabbing her hand, "Look, let's go talk about this somewhere private. I _swear_ I wasn't interested in her at all."

She yanked her hand away before he could touch it and backed away from him, slowly shaking her head. "You say that now, but the look on your face said something totally different when she was snuggling up to you. But, you're right. I could use some privacy." She turned and began striding quickly towards the door of the resort without once looking back. "Somewhere without _you_."

There was a ringing silence for a moment after she slammed the door behind herself, then everyone in the area suddenly started chattering loudly about nothing at all, carefully not looking at Duncan as he stared at the empty space where Courtney had just been.

"We tried to warn you, man," Geoff said sympathetically, giving him a pat on the shoulder that Duncan just shrugged off without even a threat. "One of the camera men dropped off some film this morning, said the producers wanted us to watch it. We thought it was way weird, but did it anyway."

"They must have wanted some conflict for when they wind up doing more clips from isolation during the reunion. Or maybe they're just bored; now that almost everyone's gone there can't be much going on at camp most of the time," DJ said with a helpless shrug. "Anyway, all that was on the tape was two-and-a-half hours of Heather... 'snuggling up to you' before she finally decided you were out of it enough to let her steal that map."

"Courtney kind've went crazy when she saw it. Watched it three times in a row, just getting redder and redder. By the end they had the med crew standing by in case that vein in her temple blew up, and one of the medics took the tape away. Said it was for her own good." Geoff lifted his hat slightly off his head so he could rake his fingers this his hair, looking in the direction Courtney had gone as thoughtfully as he ever got. "She's actually way calmer than she was a few hours ago."

"And that's a little scary. You might be dodging a bullet here, man." DJ circled around Duncan, until he could get a look at his face. "Are you gonna be okay?"

Duncan's jaw was clenched tight, and the look of sheer rage in his eyes was enough to make his friend really believe for the first time that whatever it had been that got him sent to juvie could have been something very nasty. "Just got to wait six more days for the finale, then we'll be out of this place."

"And you can move on and start looking for one of the other fishes in the sea?"

"And I will be able to _kill_ Chris when they drag us back to camp."

Geoff and DJ exchanged a look, unsure of how serious he was or if he even realized how pointless that would be. "Uh, dude, you do know Chris couldn't have been the one who--"

"Whoever's watching the tapes they're making here had better warn Chris to enjoy the next few days, because after that he's a dead man."

"Seriously, he wasn't even here for--"

"_Dead._"

"They said there was this award's--"

"...Wait a minute. Did I tell everyone, _and the cameras_, that I've never-- Oh _crap!_"

Well, DJ and Geoff both agreed, at least the look of complete mortification on his face now was better than the one of murderous rage. 


	2. Can't Smile Without You

Courtney was staring at one of the walls in her bedroom with ferocious concentration after leaving Duncan standing out near the pool, trying to keep her emotions under control through sheer force of will. _Stay strong, Courtney,_ she thought to herself. _He is _not_ worth getting all upset over. You can do so much better than a guy who can't wait for one stupid month before cuddling up to the nearest pretty girl. It doesn't matter that he has those gorgeous eyes, or that you thought you had a real connection, or that-- No! _No_, focus. Those are the things you don't want to think about._

She heard someone coming into the room behind her, but the lack of angry excuses let her know it wasn't Duncan so she didn't really care. She was proven right when Bridgette came up and wrapped and arm around her shoulders, Leshawna and, for some reason, Lindsay following close behind. "It's okay, Court," she said, giving her a warm squeeze, "don't be afraid to let it all out. We're all girls here, and we'll watch the door to make sure no jerks try and bother you."

"'Let it all out'?" she repeated, her lips thinning. "I am _not_ going to cry over him. I _won't_ waste my tears on someone like... like Duncan ." Though she tried to say the words with conviction, the effect was rather ruined by the way she just couldn't keep her voice from shaking.

"That's right, girl," Leshawna said, backing her up. "A guy like that does not deserve to have a nice girl like you getting all bent out of shape about him. You could do _so_ much better, and after this show airs you know the guys will be fallin' all over themselves for a chance to ask you out."

Even though Leshawna was basically repeating the same things Courtney had told herself just a few minutes before, her final words and the mental image of a parade of guys going after her like she was a prize to be won that came with it finally made Courtney's resolve snap. Her legs went out from under her and she collapsed onto her bed with a quiet wail, the tears she'd been trying to hold back spilling over. "But I don't want another guy!"

"I thought she said she wasn't gonna cry," Lindsay said, absently twirling a strand of hair around her finger. Of course, she did everything absently.

Courtney ignored her. "Do you know what the worst part is?" she asked as Bridgette and Leshawna settled on either side of her, offering comforting noises and supportive contact.

"That they're going to show him sorta cheating on you on national TV?" Lindsay replied, clearing not getting that it was supposed to be a rhetorical question.

Courtney shot her a look. "What are you even doing here?" she asked. "None of us are Tyler, if that's what you're hoping for."

"I know _that._ ...But does that mean you know who he is?" Lindsay asked with a hopeful expression on her face, before giving herself a little shake and pulling her mind back to the topic at hand. "_Anyway_, all my friends at home always said that I was a really good person to be around when they were feeling back because, like, having me around always reminded them that things could be worse; they could have been in an accident and gotten really bad brain damage! I don't know why being around me made them think of that, but helping makes me happy!"

Courtney hated to admit it, but she could see Lindsay's friends' point, and dropped the question of her presence to get back to the subject at hand. "When I was getting ready to come on here I watched a bunch of these stupid reality shows to try and figure out the best way to win the money, and you know the type of contestant I hated the most? The stupid vapid girls who fell for one of the guys on their show and acted like they thought they were totally in love and weren't going to break up, like, a week after they got to go back home." After the words left her mouth she remembered that all of the other girls had also found boyfriends on the show and quickly added, "Um, no offense."

"Nah, it's cool," Leshawna said, waving away her words. "Harold might be some good sort've freaky, but he can't hold a candle to the guys back home."

"Yeah," Bridgette added, "Our guys might be nice, but we know we're just having a good time together until we get back to our normal lives."

That just made Courtney feel worse than ever. "Well, I _didn't_. And that's the worst part, because all the people watching are going to think _I'm_ one of those stupid vapid girls, and I knew they would when I gave up and kissed him in front of the camera, but I did it anyway because thought we had a real connection and didn't want to wait until the cameras were gone to act on it. I mean, I know it's not just about looks--the whole rebellious punk thing is _so_ not my type--and even back when we were fighting all the time there were always times he could say something to make me smile no matter how annoyed I was at him, and I always felt so _safe_ around him even when he was doing his stupid hook-hand act." She slowly leaned forwards, pressing her face into her hands with a low moan. "And then he turns around and lets _Heather_ snuggle up to him? I could've understood it if it had at least been Gwen, I mean at least she's not a giant bitch, but Heather? And I can't help it even though know that shouldn't be getting all crazy jealous about this. I'm better than this! I'm mature! I was a--"

"CIT," the other girls finished for her in chorus.

She just nodded silently in response, keeping her face hidden in her hands and trying her best to control how much her body was shaking. She wasn't even sure any more if the tremors came from rage or pain.

"Listen, Court," Bridgette said, rubbing Courtney's back in small circles. "I know we're supposed to be all 'Grr, bad man's a jerk' supportive right now, but if you really feel this awful, maybe... you should try hearing him out. I mean, Duncan might be a lot of bad things, but I don't think he's shallow enough to go after someone as heinous as Heather is just because she has a pretty face--"

"She's not even that pretty!" Lindsay chimed in. "She just has nice hair!"

Bridgette nodded to acknowledge her point, but stuck to her original train of thought as if she hadn't been interrupted. "--And the look on his face when you stormed off, well... it _really_ wasn't the look of someone who was upset because they got caught cheating. Maybe, after you've both calmed down a little, you might be able to work things out?"

"I just don't think I can..." Courtney mumbled into her hands.

Leshawna and Bridgette exchanged a knowing look over the top of her head. They could both recognize that Courtney's tone hadn't been one of a girl dead-set on holding onto a grudge. It had been the sound of someone who just needed a little nudge to show her that maybe what she'd had was just as special as she'd thought it to be. 


	3. Can't Stop Thinking About Your Love

Duncan waited patiently for everyone to go to bed for the night. Luckily the Boat of Losers reached the isolation resort so late in the day that it didn't take long, but he still needed to keep sitting around for a couple more hours to make sure Courtney would be asleep.

He'd gotten the location out of the guys earlier that night, and approached it when he was sure it was late enough. The door was locked, which he'd expected, but he just smirked and kept walking on to the stairs at the other end of the hallway, counting doors as he walked. People always acted like being able to pick locks was such a big deal, but as far as he was concerned using a little elbow grease instead could be a lot less work and a lot more fun.

He went straight up to the next floor, to the room that he thought should be directly above hers, and banged on the door until someone answered.

"Huh?" she asked, looking like she wasn't even awake enough to be on her feet. The perfect state of mind for someone to be in if you didn't want them asking many questions.

"Hey... Bev, was it?" he said, pushing past her into her room.

"It's Beth." Her brow furrowed like she knew something wasn't quite right but she was still too out of it to put together what it was.

"Right, right, Beth. Anyway--"

"It's written on the door," she interrupted, too out of it to shift conversation threads.

"Okay, _sorry_. Look, I'm just passing through, so just ignore me and I'll be out of here in a second." He took off through the door in the back of the room leading onto the small private balcony every bedroom had before she could try talking to him any more, not at all in the mood to deal with her any longer.

"Never thought I'd be using you to break _into_ somewhere," he said as he snagged his grappling hook, loyal accomplice in escapes from juvie, on the of the balustrade and threw himself over the railing. He'd always found something bizarrely soothing in doing this; in the way he didn't need to think about anything but keeping a tight grip on the rope and making sure he didn't let himself down too fast, so he could just let his mind wander wherever it wanted instead.

Apparently, not really unexpectedly, this time it wanted to fixate on Courtney breaking up with him, if you could really call it breaking up when they'd never really had a chance to date to begin with. The crazy thing was that if somebody had told him that morning that they'd end up going their separate ways he wouldn't have thought much about it. Probably even would have privately agreed with them, although he would have assumed it would take at least a few weeks. She'd realize that they were in different leagues, or he'd find out that there was a limit to how far she could loosen up that wasn't far enough for them to really work out together, or they'd both just not be as into each other without the show driving them half-crazy. He'd always known that the only place the bad boy and the good girl really got together and had it last was in cheesy teen movies, because the guys in those movies always had a warm mushy center which was definitely _not_ the case for him except in the literal sense. But it had seemed okay with her, because even if he wasn't Prince Charming _she_ was a long way from being a fairytale princess herself.

But to have her kick him to the curb over some stupid gameplay move that hadn't meant _anything_ to him, as part of an alliance that he'd mostly tried to form because the best revenge he could think of to take on that bitch for the role he'd been sure she'd played in Courtney being eliminated was to swipe the win right out from under her power-hungry little nose right when she thought she had it in her hand, was more than he could stand. He thought they'd at least have a chance to start getting more annoyed by each other, more than they were in the first few weeks of the show when she was still trying to pretend that she wasn't hot for him, before it ended, not that it would all be over when he was still just as into her as he'd been the last time they'd seen each other. Maybe even more so, after how long he'd spent anticipation their reunion.

Now he found himself fixating on how well they'd worked together. On how he'd never clicked with another girl as much as he had with her, even when she was in full-on Miss Prissy CIT-mode. And on how part of him that he'd been trying to pretend didn't even exist had kind've hoped that maybe they could get the cheesy teen movie ending, just a new version of it where she accepted him as a law-breaking asshole who might be willing to find a friend a new pet every once in a while, and he realized that she would always be a bossy wanna-be authority figure who could cut loose just often enough to make her interesting.

But if there was one thing that could be said for Duncan it was that, even if he wasn't as goal-oriented as Courtney was, once he knew what it was he wanted he would keep his eyes on the prize until it was his. This had gotten him in trouble more than once when the thing he'd wanted had been another person's possession, but mostly it had worked out for him. And it would again... as long as he was positive he still had a shot.

Which was why he was dropping lightly onto her balcony and heading into her room through the door he'd _known_ she wouldn't think to lock, being on the third floor and all. Her bed was only a few feet from the door, and when he turned towards her to see her sleeping for a second her felt like a nasty, creepy, bastard, but he pushed the feeling away. He had to know for sure how much deep shit he was in with her, and this was the only way he'd be able to find out as long as she wasn't willing to get near him while they were both awake.

She'd always sucked at hiding how she really felt about him when she was sleeping. It had been how he'd first figured out that he wasn't just bullshitting and she really _was_ into him back during the camping mission. If even her unconscious mind didn't want anything to do with him, he'd know that making things right with her would need to take way longer than the six, now closer to five, days they had left before someone won the show and they were all shipped back home. Luckily, he knew that he didn't need to worry about her waking up; if there was one thing Camp Wawanakwa did to a person it was making them capable of sleeping through _anything_ until Chris showed up with the day's task..

He gingerly laid down beside her, on top of the covers and not letting any part of his body touch hers. He suspected that he was going to need to scrub his body with lye to stop feeling dirty after this; he'd be the first to admit (gleefully, and probably playing it up way more than was actually true) that he could be a sick SOB when he wanted to, but the most he'd ever do with a girl who wasn't willing was flirt, and he knew that he was pushing too close to a line that he never planned or wanted to cross. At least he could say for sure that this would be a one-time-only thing, that he'd be out of there quickly, and that he wasn't going to initiate as much as a single touch.

He waited, tense and annoyed that it had come to this--at himself, at Heather, and even at Courtney although he didn't really want to be--for her to make some sort've move. It didn't even matter whether it was away from him, or towards, or even waking up and doing her best to pound his face in, as long as it gave him the sign he needed. It ended up taking less than a minute, though it felt like a lot longer to him, then all at once she rolled towards him and snuggled against his side. She rested her head on his chest, and after a moment her face scrunched up and she mumbled something in a sleepy slur out of which he could only make out his own name and the word "shower".

He laughed quietly as all the tension drained from his body. "I'll get right on that next, Princess," he whispered to her. "Had something else to worry about first."

She seemed to accept that, humming contentedly as he curled his arm around her then seeming to fall back into complete unconsciousness. The first time they'd been in this position he'd noticed, though he'd never admit to such a girly thought out loud, the way his hand seemed to fit perfectly in the curve of her lower back. Even after everything that had happened, that hadn't changed. "I _knew_ you still dug me," he said with a grin and more confidence than he'd actually felt, his thumb rubbing small circles at the base of her spine.

But it wasn't long before he went still, the smile dropping from his face. "Well, time to take my punishment like a man," he said to himself, and began gently shaking her awake. "Wakey wakey, Babe. You'd better appreciate that I'm giving you a chance to punch me in the face for this instead of just sneaking back out."

She woke up slowly, and at first she clearly didn't remember what had happened the day before. She shifted against his side, not moving away but just tilting her head back to blink muzzily up at him. "Mmm... Duncan?" she said, and smiled sleepily up at him so warmly that he couldn't resist smiling back, quirking his eyebrows at her in the way he was sure she liked. For just a second it felt like everything was just fine.

But he could _see_ it was her memories gradually came back to her the more she woke. The happiness in her eyes shifted to confusion, then suspicion, and all at once the anger returned and she threw herself away from him, shoving him off the bed with as much force as she could muster in the same movement.

"What are you _doing_ here?" she yelled, he voice shrill.

He propped himself up on his arm from his position on the floor, smirking lazily up at her. "Well, Princess, all this time I figured I'd be shacking up with you when I got here. Didn't want to lose out on any time just because you hadn't forgiven me yet." The first part, at least, was entirely true, though he'd realized right away that it wouldn't be happening... yet.

"You... I... we..." she stammered, before words failed her entirely and she was reduced to mouthing wordlessly at him as she went various shades of red and tried to get past whatever pervy mental image had just appeared in her mind. Duncan's smirk only grew as he watched her. Finally she managed to spit out, "What sort of girl do you think I am? We haven't ever even been on a real date!"

"Ooh, dirty mind there, Princess. I was just talking about sleeping. What were _you_ thinking of?" This time the red in her cheeks was from anger and she aimed a kick at his side, but he'd bet any amount of money that the way her foot missed him entirely was a sign that she didn't really have it in her heart to hurt him. While she was still close he propped himself up further, reaching out to lightly touch her wrist with his free hand, ready to grab it if it looked like she was going to pull away. He kind've dreaded what he was about to say--being so mushy wasn't something he _ever_ liked to do--but he had the feeling that if he wanted to get things fixed between them he was going to need to give her _something_ honest to start out with. "Seriously, Courtney, I want you for a _lot_ more than just your body. Though if you ever feel like offering it up, I'm not _about_ to say no." He leered at her, backing safely into more familiar flirtation.

For an instant she looked like her resolve was faltering, a smile threatening to turn up the corners of her mouth, then she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them again as angry looking as ever. "Even if you don't just want me for my body, it doesn't matter if you're perfectly happy using Heather for hers!"

Duncan's mind was so overwhelmed by annoyance that she was _still_ hung up on that stupid move that just for a moment it lost room to remember that the arm he was leaning on was the only thing holding him up. Unfortunately, that moment was all it took for him to smack himself in the forehead with its hand, sending him smashing down to slam his head into the floor. As he cursed and clutched the back of his head, Courtney started forward and began reaching out for him as if on autopilot, mere inches away from brushing her fingertips against his head when she suddenly seemed to realize what she was doing and pulled away again just as fast.

Suddenly the pain in his head seemed totally worth it.

"Okay, fine," he said when the initial burst of pain faded. "They showed you the one--One!--time that it might look like I'm not totally into you. They ever show you all the times I made it clear I wouldn't want that bitch touching me with a ten-foot-pole if I didn't have to put up with it for the sake of the game? Or all the times I used my time in that stupid outhouse to send shout outs to you so you'd know I hadn't forgotten you after you left? Or, hell, he's one you don't need a tape for; go ask Leshawna, and I can't _believe_ I'm saying this, if she'll tell you what happened when we had to make a totem pole."

"Maybe... Well, maybe I will! But don't think that would mean I forgive you! In fact, why haven't I kicked you out of here yet? Go away, Duncan!"

This time her foot actually did connect with him, although instead of a real kick it was just a shove, nudging him to get to his feet and leave. He went along with the order easily enough. He'd already gotten more than he'd expected out of waking her; a conversation, however short, instead of a swift beating. "Your wish is my command, Princess," he said, sketching a short, sarcastic, bow before letting himself out through the actual exit. He couldn't hold back a cocky smirk as he shut it behind him again and began planning out his next move. Things would work out. He was sure of it now. 


	4. Can't Forget This Evening

In a way Courtney was as angry at herself as she was at Duncan for what had happened when she'd woken up. She knew that it was stupid--of course it was _all_ his fault for sneaking in to begin with--but she hadn't been quite as asleep as she'd let him believe before he'd shaken her awake.

Just the feel of the bed bending under another person's weight had been enough to snap her out of being fully unconscious, but before she'd become aware enough to go into a full panic she'd recognized the smell of him, a mix of the metallic bite from his ever-present jewelry (and she couldn't hold back a small private giggle at the thought of how he'd react if he knew she called his accessories that), smoke from she-probably-didn't-want-to-know-what fires, and stale sweat that he really ought to wash off now that there were decent showers around. Not that she could _totally_ blame him for not washing often enough while still at the camp; if she'd had to use the boys showers she might have decided that skipping one or two or five was less gross than running the risk of Owen dashing in to stink up the toilet stalls herself.

Once she'd recognized him she'd gladly curled up against him, aware enough to realize that it had been a long time since she'd had a chance to touch him but still too insensate to call up why they hadn't had all the time that was left in the day after he arrived at the resort to spend together. She thought that there might have been some part of her keeping the rest of her from waking fully enough to remember that horrible recording she'd seen, allowing herself to have one last of the rare times when she'd been perfectly happy with him.

She'd heard him when he said that he was giving her a chance to hit him, and she suspected that it was the main reason she'd mostly kept her temper after he'd pulled her out of her tranquil doze and back to the painful present. Not because she was touched at the gesture, or because she felt bad that he'd thought she'd want to injure him (it wasn't as though she never had before), but out of a perverse desire to not just do whatever it was he expected from her. So she'd allowed him the chance to leave her room in relative peace.

For the time being, at least. When she heard something scratching at the door minutes after it closed behind him she started thinking that maybe it wouldn't stay so peaceful after all.

She stamped up to the door, all set to yell at him for whatever crazy thing he was doing now. But with her hand on the door she paused, took a deep breath, and mentally counted backwards from ten. She _needed_ to remember that even though they were out of the competition there were still a bunch of hidden camera around, ready to catch them at anything the producers thought might be interesting to pull up at a reunion show or throw in a DVD's extra features. She was sure that they private bedrooms were safe--they might always be glad to capture some making out, but the sexual shenanigans of horny minors wasn't something the producers wanted to be caught with tapes of, especially since she'd heard that they were trying to find a US network that would air the show--but the hallways were another story. She _really_ didn't want to risk coming off as the bad guy of this fight in the public eye, when in reality that was so totally him.

Back on the island she wouldn't have thought twice about the possibility, secure in her belief that no matter how the show editors spun things the truth would always shine through, but that was before she'd come to the Playa des Losers and gotten to flip through the magazine and newspaper articles the crew provided them with so they could see what the people watching thought of the show. To her shock she'd found out that they liked _him_ more than they liked _her_, though she wasn't totally sure if it was because they had as much of a thing for bad boys as she apparently did, or if it was just because (in her now totally unbiased, she tried to convince herself, opinion) he was the hottest guy on the show apart from Justin, who was _Justin_ and thus didn't really count. There were even some people out there who seemed to hate her just because he liked her, which was totally crazy.

More than that, she knew that Chris would always, _always_, make sure things were edited in the way that he thought would always get the most viewers. And if Duncan was the one the viewers wanted to root for, well, if she was unlucky enough to open the door when he looked even the tiniest bit innocent (and, given her life recently, she wouldn't be at all surprised if she was) it would be _so_ easy for them to cut things together so it made her look like a total bitch, bursting out of her room to scream at him when he just happened to be passing by, as if she'd been waiting with her eye pressed against the peephole to catch sight of him.

So she calmed herself enough to just yell though the door, "Duncan, you creep, if you're sticking your stupid hook in my door like in that dumb story of yours, I _swear_ you're losing any chance of me forgiving you!"

"Hah!" he hollered back. "So you admit there's a chance!"

Somehow she got the feeling that any response she made to that he'd only twist around even more into something she didn't mean, so in the end she just turned around silently and went back to bed.

When she woke up again she was alone, and she tried to pretend that she didn't feel a twinge of disappointment that he hadn't weaseled his way back in again. She went through her usual morning routine, showering, dressing, primping, and giving herself a little pep-talk in front of the mirror before opening up the door to start her day.

The routine was broken when she almost tripped over Duncan, who was sprawled in front of the door fast asleep. She stared down at him, not sure what the right response was to finding an ex-not-quite-boyfriend camping out in front of your door. Camping out on the uncomfortably hard wooden floor when wonderfully soft beds had been provided for all of them...

With nobody there to see it, her eyes softened and she turned to go back into her room, pausing when she saw the work she'd heard him scraping away at the night before. Each bedroom in the Playa des Losers had a neat nameplate on it stating whose room it was. But now, under the 'Courtney' on her door, he'd deeply carved the words 'And Duncan's Room - Come on Princess, you know it's just a matter of time'.

She reached out to touch his message, feeling the indentations beneath her fingertips. She could tell that he'd put more effort into it than just shaping the words; he'd taken the time to smooth them out so her skin didn't snag on any splinters as she traced the letters. The cockiness was so like him, and when she was honest with herself she suspected that that was the first reason he'd been able to start getting under her skin, digging into her brain, and weaseling his way into her heart back when they were still new to each other. Her parents had always stressed to her that true confidence was the sign of a winner, or someone who would get far in life. It was why she tried to never doubt herself or her actions, why up until (and, as much as she could, during) the total crazy unreality of the show she worked to hard to make sure the people around her knew that she was never out of her depth, that she was always poised, and that if she ever _wasn't_ she would sure as heck wouldn't let herself be thrown for long.

So seeing a juvenile delinquent, somebody who should be a complete and total failure at life, just _oozing_ the type of confidence she'd always needed to work for, it totally threw off the world as she'd always known it. People who _weren't_ winners couldn't be that cocky, not really. They were always full of doubts, even if they tried to hide it, and they needed the winners to help guide them. It was one of the earliest lessons she could remember her family giving her in their quest to make sure they raised a future elected official, and Duncan turned it right on its head because she was as sure as she'd ever been of anything in her life that it wasn't just an act covering up his fears and uncertainties.

So she'd begun to pay attention to him. And she'd never been able to stop again.

She pulled herself out of her thoughts with a small shake of her head. That might have been true in the past, but it was going to need to change now. "If the producers want somebody to pay for that, I hope you know that it is _not_ going to me," she finally said without any real malice, and went back to what she'd been doing.

She grabbed a spare blanket and pillow from her room, a slightly sadistic urge making her grab the pinkest, laciest, ones she could find, and carried them back out. She looked carefully up and down the hall, making sure no one was watching but any cameras that were around, then draped the blanket over Duncan. She started to kneel down to lift his head and slide the pillow under it, but, just like when she'd reached out to him when he'd banged his head the night before, her hands froze in place just before they touched him, hovering in the air close enough to his face for her to almost feel the heat from his skin. "...No. No, that would be too much," she said to herself, and ended up just setting the pillow on his chest instead.

"Aw, that's so sweet!" a voice chirped behind Courtney, startling her backwards, her hand pressing against her chest when shock made her heartbeat speed up.

She spun around, and saw Lindsay smiling at her and Duncan like they were the cutest things she'd ever seen. "This doesn't mean anything! I'm just too nice a person to leave somebody lying on the cold ground when I can help, that's all!" she rushed to defend her actions before Lindsay could say another word. Then, excuses out, her eyes narrowed slightly. "Where did you _come_ from? I swear nobody was there."

"Oh, I can be _totally_ quiet when I want to be! And I kind've thought that maybe this was a good time to want to be!" She glanced at the room she'd just come out of, and Courtney suddenly realized two things: that it was Tyler's door she was looking at, and that she was still wearing the outfit she'd had on when she'd left the night before. Courtney flushed red while Lindsay cheerfully went on, "See, after I said goodbye last night I saw his door, and I realized that I could just wait here and _that_ was how I could find him! And it totally worked!"

"That's... great, Lindsay," Courtney said weakly, privately hoping that she'd either used protection or gotten lucky, because any poor child cursed enough to have them as parents would have to be the dumbest, least-coordinated, kid the world had ever seen.

"Yeah, it was! We made out until we got tired, then we snuggled until we fell asleep, and I _so_ wish I hadn't listened to Heather about not getting involved with the enemy because Camp would have been _so_ much nicer the first couple of weeks if we could have done that all the time!"

"Oh, so you didn't-- Okay! Congratulations!" _God,_ she thought, _maybe Duncan was right and I _do_ have a dirty mind._ But, no, that was ridiculous.

"Aww, thank you. Congrats to you too!"

"Congratulations for what?" Courtney asked, stomach sinking, but when Lindsay's eyes darted to Duncan for an instant she cut her off before she could even start responding, "Because I already told you that the fact that I'm lending this swine a blanket means _nothing_, so I know that it can't be about that."

To Lindsay's credit, her brain was able to switch gears, even if it took a moment and she was apparently unable to remember (or maybe just listen to) things that had been said to her just minutes before. After a second she said, "Umm... for your hair looking really shiny today?"

Courtney smiled at her brightly, although her lips were tight. "I thought it had to be something like that," she said, and pushed herself to her feet. "Thank you. Now, I think I'm going to find breakfast."

"Wait!" Lindsay called after her. "You forgot, pillows don't go on people's chests! I know the ones here can make that a little confusing, because they look _so_ soft and squishy, just like a stuffed animal! But--"

Courtney just kept walking, wanting to put as much distance between herself and Lindsay as she could before the other girls voice woke Duncan up and she needed explain to _him_ that it didn't mean anything too. She suspected that somehow he just wouldn't believe it. 


	5. Can't Take My Eyes Off You

**Important Note:** For some reason this site glitched when I uploaded chapter four and never moved this story back to the top of the list of recently updated fics. So if you start reading this and wonder where on Earth Duncan's frilly blanket comes from, it means that you missed that update and get two new chapters for the price of one!  


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Duncan awoke to the feeling of somebody staring at him intently, although he did his best to ignore it until it became obvious that whoever it was wasn't going away. His eyes snapped open while his mouth snapped "_What?_" part of him hoping that he was going to catch Courtney making googly eyes at him when she thought she wouldn't be caught.

Instead he saw Lindsay squatting down on her heels behind him toying with the ends of her hair. "Oh, hi Duncan," she said, like she'd just suddenly spotted him and hadn't been watching him for however long it had taken for him to wake up.

"Oh great. It's Bimbo Barbie." Suddenly he looked down at himself and realized what he was covered by, and his expression shifted to a scowl, "Okay, ditz, you had _better_ not be the one who put this... _thing_ on me." He plucked at a length of lace like he was afraid it might carry diseases.

"Oh no, that was Courtney."

Suddenly his whole face changed, becoming speculative. "Princess, eh?"

"She said it meant 'nothing', though."

"Yeah, yeah; that's what they all say." He raised the pillow and blanket to examine them, and now that he knew they belong to Courtney he realized that he could catch a whiff of the fruity perfume she liked off the cover, and, when he looked closer, he spotted a dark hair that had gotten itself threaded through the lace on the pillow. Suddenly, knowing that they'd come from _her_ bed, his decision about what to do with the things became a lot less cut-and-dry. Did he hunt down his own room and find bedding that didn't make his inner child scream 'Cooties!' at the top of its lungs, or did he trust that he'd put enough fear of himself in the other contestants to be able to use things of hers without needing to constantly pound people for making fun of the fact they Glinda the good witch had exploded all over them? For that matter, did he actually give a damn what they thought of him? Food for thought.

For now he folded up the blanket, set the pillow on top of it, and dropped both beside her door. Then he pushed himself to his feet, pressing both his hands into his lower back and bending backwards to pop his spine, which wasn't feeling like it was at its best after a night on the floor. Finally he looked at Lindsay, who was still watching him. "Okay, I give; what the hell are you waiting around here for?"

She smiled brightly at him, and chirped, "I wanted to help!"

"Help. And why would _you_ want to help _me_, Barbie? I've never done anything for you." God, if he found out that Courtney had told Lindsay the bunny story and convinced her he was a nice guy deep down into too he was going to need to rethink whether winning her back was a good idea after all.

He frowned slightly when he realized that he wasn't even fooling himself with that thought. Give up on her? Not happening.

"Okay, so I was thinking--"

"All right, now I _know_ you're lying."

Lindsay didn't even seem to notice the interruption, "--and I thought about how when I finally found out that Heather was such a..." She rattled off a sting of profanity that would have made a pirate blush, but Duncan just smirked. "...I was worried that maybe people would think I was a... well, you know, too because I'd thought we were friends for so long, even though I'm _so_ not like that _at all_. But when I got here nobody thought like that at all, which was weird to me because a lot of them wouldn't have gone home if she didn't always have me to vote with her. Then you got here, and she had made someone like you less, and I wanted to help you to make up for always helping her before!"

He did his best to wade through her babble to find the point. "...So, you want to help me because you feel guilty about helping that bitch get as far as she has?"

"That, and you liked my bike!"

"Well, thanks but no thanks." He started walking down the hall away from her, calling over his shoulder, "I don't need the help of a cheerleader to win back my girl."

"But what if I knew how to make her like you again before this afternoon?!"

At those words, he stopped dead in his tracks. He had his own plans for winning her over, of course, but they all assumed it would take at least a couple of days. But, that afternoon...? "All right, ditz. I'll hear you out."

"Great! So, what you need to do is..."

o 0 O 0 o

"How many times do I have to tell you? No. Fucking. Way."

Duncan stamped into the dining room while Lindsay tagged along right behind him, still trying to win him over to her plan. "But it will _so_ work! It's so romantic, no girl can resist!"

"No girl can resist what?"

Duncan covered his face with his hand when he recognized Courtney's voice. She was sitting at a table off to the side, listening in on them with undisguised interest. "Nothing, Princess. She's a nutcase." He grabbed the chair beside her, throwing himself into it. "This spot taken?"

"No." She stood, and began gathering up her dishes. "Neither is this one." When she had them all neatly stacked together she glanced at him. "By the way, what in the world were you doing sleeping outside of my room this morning."

"Peaceful protest, Babe. You heard of a sit-in? Well I'm staging a sleep-in until I get my rightful bed." He leaned back in his chair, cocking his eyebrows at her. "Just call me 'Gandhi'."

"Wait, _that's_ your name?" Lindsay piped up. "I thought it was Duncan! I'm sorry, I _really_ thought I had that one right!"

Duncan and Courtney both stared at her for a second, then exchanged a glance. Duncan shrugged slightly at her, trying to communicate that it wasn't really worth arguing with her once a new idea had somehow managed to force its way into her thick brain, at least not when he was _already_ trying to get her to give up on another stupid idea. One of Courtney's eyebrows raised slightly, but when she turned back to talk to Lindsay it wasn't to correct her. "Okay, Lindsay, since this ass doesn't want to tell me, what _were_ you talking to him about?"

"I have a good idea for how he can make you like him again!" she said, then the smile fell off her face. "Oops. That should have been a surprise."

"Is that so?" she asked, and a smile began to play around her lips as she turned to Duncan. "Why, Duncan, I thought you'd be willing to do _anything_ to make me forgive you. Isn't that true?"

The woman was _challenging_ him, he realized from the look of her eyes. She knew full-well just how stupid any plan Lindsay came up with would have to be, and was goading him into going along with it.

And damned if she wasn't way too hot to resist whenever she got into that mood. "Okay, _fine_ Princess, you want to see what she's cooked up? Then meet me at..." Realizing that he didn't actually know much about where anything was in the resort, he lowered his voice so no curious eavesdroppers could overhear them and asked her, "Where's the most private place in this joint anyway?"

She actually seemed to give the question some honest thought, and when she responded her voice was just as low, protecting his privacy. "You can get to the roof from the attic. Nobody ever goes up there."

"Be there then, in half-an-hour." He snagged an uneaten apple and half a bagel from the tray she'd been about to carry away and hopped to his feet. "But I hope you don't mind having this bimbo's blood on your hands if this doesn't work, Princess."

"Oh, _gosh_," she said sarcastically, rolling her eyes as he turned to walk away. "Saying things like _that_ is definitely the way to make me think you're not a psychopath I should never have gotten involved with to begin with."

"Glad to see you're finally figuring that out," he replied, grinning right up until the door closed behind him and he thought about what he'd just gotten himself into.

o 0 O 0 o

Lindsay had told him that she needed to get some things ready before they could start the plan, so Duncan figured out where the door to the attic was on his own and waited, leaning against the wall under the trapdoor to the roof, for her to show up.

When she finally reappeared, with only a few minutes left before Courtney was supposed to show up, he was annoyed to see that she wasn't alone. "What's _he_ doing here?" he asked, eyeballing Trent, who was carrying his guitar.

"Weeeeell, we don't have a marching band, so Trevor was the next best thing!" Lindsay said.

"Oh no. I agreed to do this for Princess, and I'd even let you stick around because you already know what's going on, but if you think I'm doing something this stupid in front of anyone else you've got another thing coming."

"Hey, man, don't worry about it," Trent said, raising his hand in a gesture of peace. "I'm just trying to help out because Heather screwed up my relationship too. I promise to keep whatever it is you need me for a secret."

Duncan kept glaring at him for a moment, until he heard the door at the bottom of the stairs opening for what had to be Courtney. "_Fine_, but don't think I'm letting you get away with it if you blab."

"Duncan? Are you here?" Courtney called out as she reached the top of the stairs.

"Yeah, Babe, right over here. Let's get this over with."

"You could try to sound a _little_ excited that I'm giving you a chance to try wooing me," she said, as she walked over to them.

"Woo. Hoo," he said flatly while throwing open the trapdoor and pulling himself up onto the roof. He leaned down to offer Courtney a hand-up and she took it without thinking. She seemed to realize a moment later what she'd just done, her eyes narrowing and the top of her nose wrinkling, but by then he was pulling her up and she had to wait until she was through the door to yank her hand away. "Seriously, Princess, you're going to be wishing you hadn't dared me to do this too in a second."

"_Dared_ you? I didn't dare you to do anything!"

"Sure, you say that _now_, but we both know what you were doing." He leaned back against the safety railing surrounding the flat section of the roof, making sure they had as much privacy as she'd promised, and was happy with what he saw. "Really Babe, if you wanted to get me someplace private so badly you could have just _asked_."

She glowered at him, crossing her arms over her chest. "_You're_ the one who asked for privacy. I would have been just as happy to stay in the dining room in front of everyone while you did whatever it is you're doing!"

"Ooh, Princess, I never realized you were such an exhibitionist."

She flushed, but kept her cool. "Oh, please. Like I'd let you do anything to me that a voyeur would be interested in watching."

"Yeah, yeah. You'll be changing your tune soon enough."

"Uh, sorry to break up this lover's tiff," Trent broke in, earning a glare from Courtney and a smirk from Duncan, "but I wanted to hit the pool before it gets crowded, so could we maybe start this soon?"

"Ready when you are," Duncan said, pushing himself up to sit on the railing and giving Courtney on last hard look. "Don't forget, Princess; you _asked_ for this. And I'm giving you _one_ minute to crack a smile, and then I'm out of here."

"Don't worry, Gandhi! It will totally work!" Lindsay said encouragingly.

"'Gandhi?'" Trent asked Courtney out of the corner of his mouth as he pulled out his guitar.

"Just... don't ask," she replied, her focus fixed on Duncan, who was starting to twitch around the corner of his eyes as the time until the plan started ran out. She looked vaguely troubled and opened her mouth again for a second, and he wondered if maybe she was going to call off the whole thing since she'd seen how very annoyed her was, then her mouth snapped shut again and she leaned back to wait.

Oh well, it wasn't like he could blame her. _He'd_ never let anyone weasel out of a bad situation he'd gotten them stuck in in his life, so why should she? Of course, she wasn't the one who was _supposed_ to be a bully.

By then it looked like everyone was ready, and there were really no more reasons he could give to try putting it off any longer, so it was time to put the plan into action. He leaned forwards, took a deep breath, looked at Courtney with a not-at-all-happy expression on his face, and started to sing. "_You're just too good to be true, can't take my eyes off you..._" The only comfort he could find in this horrible stupid thing was that the others were all wincing just as much as he was. He did _not_ have a voice made for singing to begin with, and he was playing up the badness as much as he could without being obvious as what little revenge he could get on them.

When he reached the chorus Trent came in with his guitar, playing as loudly as he could to drown Duncan out a little. As he played he leaned towards Lindsay and said, "If there are any cameras up here, Chris is going to _hate_ this when he sees it."

"Why, because he's so bad?" she asked, then raised her voice the stage whisper (or more like stage shout, to be heard over the music) "Psst, Gandhi! You're supposed to dance some too!" Duncan shifted his glare to her and continued to stay where he was.

"No," Trent replied. "Because this is the funniest thing that's happened on the show, and they won't be able to use it without whoever made that movie getting on their case for copyright infringement."

Just then Tyler popped through the trapdoor, inexplicably wearing an outfit that looked like it should be worn by a mall's rent-a-cop, and tried to tackle Duncan. He stopped singing immediately as he stepped out of Tyler's way, making the unathletic jock stumble when he missed the collision and causing Lindsay to wave her hands at him saying, "No, no! Now you're supposed to do a running dancey thing away from him!"

"Oh, to _hell_ with this," Duncan said, easily picking Tyler up from where he'd fallen and tossing him back through the trapdoor. "Do you not _understand_ what the words 'No other people' mean, Barbie?" He started forwards, a look on his face that would have made someone more clever than Lindsay start to worry about their future health (indeed, Trent backed quickly away from her before he could get caught in the crossfire), only to be interrupted by a small noise.

It sounded like "Pfft!" and came from Courtney's direction. He whipped his head around to see her bowed over, both hands clamped over her mouth, her shoulders shaking.

"...Princess?" he said, his attention fully shifting to her.

It was as if the focus on her was all it took for her self-control to break, and suddenly she was collapsing backwards howling with laughter. None of them were quite sure how to respond to the display; they'd never before seen her so shaken by amusement, even when she was trying to be 'bad'.

Well, most of them weren't. Lindsay, on the other hand, tugged on his sleeve and said, "Look! It's been a minute and she's smiling, just like you said!" It only served to make Courtney laugh harder.

It took her a few minutes to regain her composure enough to speak. "Oh... oh..." she gasped, wiping tears of mirth from her eyes as she struggled back up to a seated position. "Oh God, I think I needed that. _That_ was the big plan? _Really?_"

"I did _try_ to say know, Babe," he said, and offered her his hand mostly just to see how she'd take it now.

She was in such good humor that she actually did allow him to pull her to her feet without seeming bothered by his touch. In fact, she was still grinning as she said, "Duncan? Duncan, you need to make me a promise, okay?"

He grinned back, pushing any and all homicidal urges towards Lindsay to the back of his mind for the moment. "Anything for you, Princess."

She reached up to ruffle his hair the way she had just before the one time she'd kissed him, and said, "Please, _never_ try serenading me again." Then she walked away from him, returning to the attic and the rest of the resort.

"See!" Lindsay said after Courtney had disappeared through the door, "I told you this would make her forgive you!"

As if those words had just jinxed it, Courtney's voice drifted back up through door as she yelled to him, "Oh, but don't think this means I've forgiven you yet!"

As Duncan whirled around to face her, as angry looking as ever, Lindsay tapped her chin with one finger and absently said, "That's so weird! It worked on Julia Stiles, and her boyfriend was just as scary as you! I guess you should have listened to me when I told you to dance..." It was only than that she finally seemed to notice how annoyed Duncan was with her and dodge nimbly backwards before he could grab her. "Eep!" she shrieked, and darted for the door before he could come after her again.

As Duncan leapt down himself, using the still out-of-it Tyler's stomach as a landing cushion, he thought that at least he gotten one good thing out of all the stupidity. The knowledge that Courtney would hopefully _never_ think challenging him to go along with a plan Lindsay came up with was a good idea again.

And the laughter hadn't been half-bad either. 


	6. Can't Rewind: We've Gone Too Far

**Note:** I usually prefer to respond to reviews by e-mail or PMs instead of making a note on the story, but I wanted to make an exception for Shinjiru Kokoro since your reviews didn't come with an email address. Thank you so much for leaving so many meaty reviews. It always makes me happy to open a review alert and see one, and I'm glad to know that I'm still keeping your attention.

Thank you again to everyone else who's reviewed as well. I think I've replied to all of you, but if I've accidentally missed someone I'm terribly sorry and hopefully it won't happen again. And thank you to everyone who's read but not reviewed to; just knowing that you've stuck around this long is enough to make me happy.  


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By the next day, Courtney was back to feeling like something approaching normal. Duncan had apparently decided that he needed a chance to regroup after his little sing-song the day before, or maybe he'd just realized that it would be a good idea to leave her alone for bit while she was in a surprisingly good mood with him. Either way, he hadn't really bothered her again aside from camping out outside of her door once more, inexplicably continuing to use the bedding she'd provided him with that morning instead of finding something that didn't look like it belonged in a five-year-old girl's room.

But when afternoon came and he still hadn't done anything more than trying to sit with her at lunch she started to feel a little bit worried, although she'd never admit it to anyone. Could he have decided to give up trying to win her back that quickly? Of course she knew that she should be hoping for that, things would be a lot easier for both of them if he just realized that he should leave her alone until they could go home and get on with their lives. Or, _she_ could get on with her life and he could get back under the thumb of his parole officer. Whichever.

She should _not_ be feeling more than a little upset at the thought, no matter how well she could hide it. And what made it worse was that she was starting to suspect this might _be_ his plan for the day, and she was letting it work. The thought was enough to make her want to give herself a quick smack across the face to get a hold of herself; it wasn't like she was an infant who should be upset by the silent treatment.

Before she could drive herself completely insane wondering about his actions, there was a knock on the door to her room. Sure that it was him there to harass her in some new, definitely-infuriating, not-at-all-bizarrely-charming (honestly), way, she darted for the door then stopped and counted to thirty, ignoring when the knock came again. She didn't want him to think she would rush for _his_ sake.

Finally she threw open the door, prepared to need to shout at him to leave her alone, only to be left tongue-tied when she saw Bridgette and Leshawna standing there instead, no sign of Duncan visible apart from the pile of pink frills next to her door.

Luckily they didn't seem to notice that she'd been thrown off-kilter. In fact, they hardly seemed to notice she was there at all, given how casually Leshawna pushed part her into her room, Bridgette at her heels. It was only after she was fully inside that Leshawna turned her attention to Courtney, holding up a shiny DVD and waving it in her face. "We have something we think you should watch," she said firmly.

"Please at least try watching it all the way through instead of throwing it away to show how over him you are or anything like that," Bridgette said with a wide yawn, making Courtney notice that neither of them looked like they were running at one-hundred-percent. "You wouldn't believe how long it took to make."

Courtney eyeballed the disk and told them, "I don't know what you two are up to, but unless you have footage that proves Heather snuggling up to him was actually some impossible trick of the camera angle, it's not going to help."

"Come on, don't be like that," Bridgette said, guiding her towards the loveseat that came with the room for the sake of comfortable TV viewing while Leshawna started up the DVD-player. "It's not even that long, which is kind've criminal when I think about how long we had to dig around in old footage to make it. I have way more respect for the show's editor's now."

"Okay, how do you two even have _access_ to the old footage."

"You can thank the all the camera crews they don't need back at the camp now for that, girl," Leshawna said, fiddling around with the player for a moment more before grabbing the remote and settling down in a chair. "They're so bored these days they'll help with anything you ask if they get a minute's entertainment out of it."

"Plus? It turns out they _really_ hate Chris and their other bosses," Bridgette piped up. "Something about being the next lowest members of the food chain whenever he ran out of interns. So when they found out we wanted to screw up the producers' plan to get you two fighting, they were happy to sneak in the film and even hooked us up with a nice editor."

"And why are you even trying to help? It's not like either of you were that interested in our relationship during the show."

"Maybe not," Leshawna acknowledged, "but if you're gonna make yourself miserable over him we figured you oughta at least see the full story."

"Anyway, I've always been a little bit of a romantic," Bridgette added.

"I really don't think showing me all the good old days is going to do much, guys," Courtney said, although her eyes were already fixed on the television as it played her introducing herself to Duncan. "I mean, honestly? Most of the old days weren't that good anyway. Just look at that!" The her on-screen looked just about ready to slap him when he responded to her friendliness with his usual rude ways. Love at first sight it certainly wasn't, although in the recording she could now see that after she forced herself to plaster a smile back on her face and turned to find someone nicer to talk to he checked out her butt as she walked away. She just hoped that the other girls hadn't included that part because they actually thought she'd be flattered by it.

"Don't you worry about that," Leshawna said, holding up her hand and shaking her head. "This part is over with fast. We can skip it if you want."

At Courtney's slow nod, after she mentally decided that she could watch the opening segment in private later if she wanted to, Leshawna skipped forward a chapter, to a black title card with white text across it reading 'Proof that Duncan's a giant mushy creampuff for you in a way he's obviously _never_ been for another girl.'

"A giant mushy creampuff?" Courtney read aloud through a snort of laughter. "Girls, I'm the one who liked him enough to almost date him, and I gave up on trying to think he was even _nice_."

"You just aren't looking at the right things," Bridgette said. "Trust us, we know what we're talking about. You'll see in a second."

The screen changed to what she immediately recognized as the camping mission. The fact that they were snuggled up asleep together in the center of the screen was a pretty big indicator.

But she was a little surprised to see that he was curled around her as much as she was against him. By the time she'd woken up that morning he had been lying there coolly, not touching her at all apart from the parts of him she had been pressed up against, acting as if he hadn't had anything at all to do with the position they'd wound up in. She'd never realized just how much he'd been lying.

He didn't stay asleep for long. After just a few seconds he started to stir, and his eyes blinked slowly open. For a moment he didn't seem to notice anything was different from usual, then he frowned and slowly tilted his head down to look at her.

All at once his expression went totally shell-shocked, his eyes widening so much she was afraid his eyes might bulge out of their sockets, his mouth dropping open, his eyebrows raising high enough that they seemed to touch his hair. The scene suddenly froze, a circle and several scribbled arrows appearing around him.

"That right there!" Leshawna whooped. "That's what we're talking about!"

"Oh, please," Courtney said, although she did find his obvious shock a little bit flattering, and maybe even... _cute._ "I was surprised when I woke up like that too. He was just too tired to remember that he wants everyone to think he's Mr. Scary Bad Boy."

"You say that now, but just you watch," Leshawna replied as the scribbles disappeared from the screen. Even though Courtney would have thought that was an indicator that the movie was no longer paused, nothing seemed to move. Just when she was about to open her mouth to ask what was wrong Leshawna added, "This is _all_ him now, by the way. Looks like your boy's brain shut down for a while there. We figured you'd wanna see how long it last."

After what felt like almost a full minute he finally pulled himself together and began slowly shifting himself away from her, into the pose he'd been in when she woke up. It took a long time since he was clearly doing his best to not to wake her up, but he eventually managed to do it without her giving any reaction apart from shifting her head a bit further up his chest. That done he turned his head to face the camera and hissed just loudly enough for the microphones to pick it up, "Chris, I know you're watching this and I've got two things to tell you. One: there are always reunion shows or press things where we'd get to see each other face to face after I have a chance to see if what just happened gets shown on the air. Two: I'm _always_ armed. _Get the picture?_"

"You've kinda gotta give him credit," Bridgette said. "Nobody else would be able to scare Chris into keeping embarrassing clips off the air like that."

The scene changed again and she frowned when she saw the hook on his hand. "But that's--"

"Yeah, this is a little bit earlier," Bridgette said as on-screen Courtney was startled and latched onto Duncan. Once again arrows flash over the picture, pointing to his brief expression of shock, this time at least keeping his mouth shut, before he schooled his expression into a smirk. "We figured the first one was a better place to start since it lasted so long. Usually he's pretty good at hiding it before anybody can notice."

The television kept flashing more and more moments of contact, some perfectly innocent, some that she could now admit to herself weren't. Hand-holding, pressing her palm against his chest without thinking about it to make him back off when he was bothering her a little too much, squeezing past him when he was blocking the door to the cafeteria, even just a time when she'd needed to catch his arm to keep from falling after tripping over an exposed root and times when _he_ had touched _her_ instead of the other way around, all met with his eyes widening at the very least and more often with even more obvious shock. Always with him getting his expression back under control before she or anyone else could notice.

Finally the screen paused again, at the sight of his eyes practically popping out of his head when she'd kissed him, even though she had been taking him up on his... offer or challenge, she wasn't quite sure, from just moments before.

"Face it girl," Leshawna said, crossing her arms across her chest and leaning back in her chair, clearly satisfied with the point that section of the tape had proven. "That does not look like a boy who's _ever_ been serious about a girl before. Not saying your guy's been totally abstinent--he already said it himself when he got here, ha!--but that there's the face of someone who's never had a shot at someone he really _likes_ before and has no _clue_ how to deal."

"Seriously," Bridgette backed Leshawna up. "I mean, Geoff is so bad at this sort've thing that he thought 'You pitch tents like a guy' was a good compliment, but even he doesn't look like I sucker-punched him every time I lean against him. Ooh, here comes the next part! This is really sweet."

Another title card appeared on the screen, this one reading 'Proof that Duncan was totally pining and not planning on getting into some skanky-assed ho's pants while you were gone.'

The diary outhouse appeared, and after a moment the door threw himself onto the seat. He looked more than a little green around the gills, making Courtney a bit worried that he might end up needing to barf into the toilet he was sitting on--she'd seen way more than her share of vomit while at Camp Wawanakwa, and did not need to watch more--but he quickly seemed to pull himself together and started talking. "Courtney, babe, you're gonna be so glad you weren't around for this one when you see it on TV. Man, I don't know which of them came up with the idea for cockroach juice, but nobody can call me the sickest bastard on this show as long as he's around."

The video started to fast-forward through the rest of his diary session, only occasionally stopping to show that he was still talking towards her, and Courtney said, "That gross food challenge? That was less than a week after I left. I never thought that he couldn't stay faithful for a few days."

"It wasn't just a few days, Court," Bridgette said.

Just then the movie reached the end of that interview session, with Duncan glancing at his watch and standing up. "Looks like it's resort time. Shame you can't be here for _this_ part, Princess, but, hey, you'd be on the other team now anyway. Hey, if it doesn't completely suck maybe I'll see about taking you there after I win the hundred grand."

Courtney's eyes softened. "Okay, that's a little sweet."

From there the scenes began to skip around, going back and forth between different interviews instead of focusing on one, occasional mentions of challenges giving her an idea of time frame. Always he was filling her in on what she'd missed, especially focusing on things that weren't likely to make it on the air.

"Turns out he spent about half the time the contracts force us to spend in there chatting at you after you left, according to that editor who was helping us," Leshawna said over the footage. "Mostly just bitchin' about whatever annoyed him that day, but, hey! At least that means you're the one he wanted to bitch to."

As she watched the brief interview clips flashing across the screen, Duncan's moods changing with the scene, sometimes to anger, sometimes to glee, sometimes to boredom, and even occasionally to hints of genuine sadness that she wasn't there to speak with in the flesh, Courtney's mind suddenly flashed back to what he'd said shortly before leaving when he'd snuck into her room that first night after he arrived. '...All the times I used my time in that stupid outhouse to send shout outs to you so you'd know I hadn't forgotten you...'

_How was I supposed to know you were telling the truth?_ she thought towards him. _The shows they aired only showed you do it _once_, for a split second! And it's your own dumb fault for not sticking to things that would make good quick sound bites if you ever wanted this to get on the air!_ Of course, knowing him he hadn't actually wanted it to get on the air where people would get to see that he had an actual heart on his chest. All he had to do was make sure the bits that made it obvious he was talking to her couldn't be cut neatly into seconds long blurbs and he could vent 'at' her without worrying about anything that wasn't mission-specific making its way on the air.

_And_ it let him act all indignant that she didn't know he'd done it even if there was no way she'd have a clue. That was probably a plus to him.

Remembering that reminded her of one of the other things he'd said then, and she turned towards Leshawna with a frown. "Hey... Duncan told me to find out about something to do with a totem pole. He said you could tell me about it. Do you know what he was talking about?"

"Tell you about? I can _show_ you it!" she replied, picking up the remote and beginning to fast-forward it for real. "It's in the section of things the boy did where other people could actually _see_ it to show he was thinking about you."

"It's actually the very last thing on the DVD, since they wouldn't let us see anything from after we were off the show," Bridgette added. "They didn't even want to let us have it, since you know how they are about letting us see anything before it airs on TV, but Leshawna was able to convince them to let us have one still frame from it."

"There we are!" Leshawna said, stopping on the still picture.

Courtney studied it, taking in the whole scene. She could see the totem of heads behind him, which made it pretty obvious what Duncan was holding. Chris was standing beside him, looking at the D+C he'd carved in the center of a heart, while Duncan himself didn't look at all happy being caught.

"That's... a little bit creepy," Courtney said, still examining his face in the picture. "And I can't _believe_ he'd actually make a heart. Especially where anyone could see it. Especially where _Chris_ could see it. That's can't have been fun for him."

Leshawna shrugged. "Eh, I beaned him with Sadie before he could tease too much."

But Courtney wasn't really paying any attention to the other girls by then. She was too busy thinking about what Duncan had said. If he'd been telling the truth about his interview sessions, and about the totem pole, then, even if it hadn't been shown much in the show, it stood to reason that he'd been telling the truth about how often he'd made it obvious he disliked Heather, didn't it? It wasn't as if he could have known she'd be able to verify anything other than Leshawna's story about their task together, or that she wouldn't be seeing the parts where he talked about Heather even if she found a way to see the ones about her, to try tricking her.

"Um, guys," she said, standing up and walking the door to open it for them. "It was really nice of you to try helping like this, but I think I need to think for awhile, okay? Alone."

"Sure thing, hon," Leshawna said, immediately stopping the DVD, getting up, and herding Bridgette out the door before her.

"We really are just trying to help," Bridgette added, smiling hesitantly at her.

"Don't worry, I'm not angry at you two," Courtney said, briefly clasping them both by the shoulders. "I really do just need to think for a little while."

"See you at dinner?" Leshawna asked.

"Sure. Save me a seat."

Once the door was safely closed behind them she picked up the remote control from where Leshawna had left it and started up the video once more, starting from the beginning and ready to watch it all this time.

Then she leaned back and let herself think. 


	7. Can't Hold Out Forever

Courtney had always been an early riser, so she was one of the few people right at the door when the dining room opened for breakfast the next morning. Which meant that she was one of the first to see that something was obviously up when she walked through the door.

Sitting in front of the spot she always ate at was a shiny silver covered platter that looked like it had been pulled straight out of a movie trying to show that its characters were eating someplace fancy. "What are you up to now?" she muttered to herself, glancing back towards the stairs she'd just come down. Duncan hadn't seemed like he was planning anything for that morning when she'd accidentally stepped on his foot on her way out the door and woken him up, he'd just gone off the take a shower after he'd finished his usual routine of teasing her to the limits of her patience as soon as he noticed her. But when she thought about it that did make perfect sense; of course _he'd_ bail out before anybody could see that he'd done something sweet.

She lifted the lid with a smile, only to fling it away from herself with a short shriek when she saw what it had been hiding. On the table in front of her was a large bowl filled to heaping with glistening, wiggling, scoops of lime jelly.

"Okay, _very funny_ guys," she said once the fear died down and the anger started to well up. "Who did this?" When she looked around none of the few people there were acting like they'd been the practical joker--Noah was completely ignoring everyone in favor of reading a book, Beth and Cody were both looking at her with curiosity and maybe a little concern, DJ had passed back out into his oatmeal, and Eva was the only one who looked amused but it really wasn't her style--but whoever did it could be hiding somewhere watching her. Her first suspect was Harold; the little creep might be punishing her for something Duncan did _again_, and he was weedy enough to squeeze into all sorts of hiding spots.

Then she noticed the small card propped up against the side of the bowl. She snatched it up, grimacing at a small glob of the jelly that had fallen over the edge of the bowl and slid down the side right next to it, thankfully just far enough away so that none of it got on the card or she might just have gagged.

Written inside the card was a short note.

_Hey, Courtney!_

A little bird told me that you and the other girls have been playing around with footage you shouldn't have access to. Not_ cool._

But, hey, the producers and I are nice guys, so we decided we'd just make you pay for what you took. So enjoy your brekky! Don't worry, we'll be getting to Leshawna and Bridgette soon.

And don't forget, we're always_ watching._

-Chris

P.S. Take a look up.

"That is _not_ fair!" Courtney said, crushing the card in her fist. "It's not like I asked them to make that movie! I didn't even know they were doing it. And what do you mean, look-- _oh no._" She'd looked up while she was speaking, and spotted what they had waiting for her there; a huge barrel attached to mechanical levers that could move it. They must have had someone glued to the camera feed for the dining room, ready to start the simple machine moving the instant they saw her head starting tilting back, because by the time she was looking up it was already tipping over enough for its contents to start pouring out. There wasn't even time to try dodging.

Courtney started screaming at eardrum-shattering levels of loud as the horrible green sludge splashed down over her. With such a deep container most of the jelly in the middle hadn't set-up properly so it was more like warm slime than anything else, which just made it seem even more like snot than ever. Worse, the slime clung to her body where the solid pieces mostly fell off.

She was dimly aware of the things going on around her--DJ snorting oatmeal down his windpipe and chocking when her screaming startled him awake, Cody whispering "Wow, it's like _Carrie_... you don't think Courtney is secretly psychic, do you?" and of the sound of the door crashing open behind her--but her mind had shut down too much to even remind her that she did _not_ lose control in public. All she could do was keep yelling and wildly flailing her arms to try shaking the jelly off them as more and more poured down for what felt to her like an impossibly long time. She was too out of it to even realize that she could have just stepped out of the stream and only been hit by the first unavoidable splash.

Then she was suddenly dragged forward, away from the last few drips from the bottom of the barrel and out of the large green puddle that had formed around her, so roughly that if she was in a normal state-of-mind she'd complain about it. As it was, she ignored the hands still wrapped around her upper arms with a grip tight enough to hurt in favor of staring down at herself, and the dripping ooze covering every inch of her body.

"Princess? Babe? _Courtney!_" The tone her name was snapped in, along with her body being given a quick shake, made her finally drag her eyes up to see that the person holding her was Duncan. Some distant part of her mind beyond the panic realized that he must have been the one who burst through the door when she started screaming.

He was looking at her with and expression of so much concern that it seemed out-of-place on his face. She should say something to reassure him, that same distant part of her realized, but her teeth were chattering too hard to get any words out. That was strange; she hadn't thought it was cold in the dining room when she'd walked into it.

Duncan cursed under his breath and released her arms, only to slide his hands down her sides then around to clasp them under her bottom. "Babe," he said seriously, "if you wanna slap me for getting my hands too close to your ass later, fine, but right now this'll be a lot easier if you can pull it together enough to hold on."

Then he lifted, pulling her easily off her feet. She managed a squeak and automatically wrapped her arms around his shoulders and her legs around his waist, letting her face fall forward to hide in the crook of his neck without even thinking about it. "Yeah, just like that," he said, letting his head briefly bump lightly against hers in the one gesture of comfort possible with his hands busy, then he raised his voice so the rest of the room could hear. "Okay, nothing to see here so go back to your breakfasts! Try following us and you'll regret it." That said he turned and walked back out the door, carrying her like she was a child.

She felt him stop at the base of the stairs leading up to the next floor, his entire body turning as he looked around them, but her brain still wasn't functioning well enough to wonder what he was thinking. Most of it was absorbed in rubbing her fingertips against his sleeves until they were completely wiped off, then moving them down to a clean area of fabric so she could feel _something_ without a thick film of jelly between her skin and what she was touching. She tried to focus on the sensation entirely, noticing as many things about that one tiny section of him as she could to distract herself. The fabric of his long-sleeved undershirt was scratchier than she thought could be totally comfortable for the layer that was his against his skin. He seemed much warmer than she was. When she pressed down she could feel his arm through the fabric, the muscle tensed from the effort of holding her up. When she rubbed against it she thought she could feel that muscle slightly under her touch.

While she was distracting herself with that, he had turned away from the stairs and walked outside instead. He walked with her for a little while before finally stopping, one of his arms leaving its position supporting her to try pushing her away. She didn't allow it, tightening her arms and legs around him until she was clinging to him like a limpet. "Fine, if _that's_ the way you wanna play it," she heard him mumble. "At least my hair's still wet."

And suddenly he was plunging both of them fully clothed into boiling-hot water.

She shrieked aloud for what was starting to feel like the millionth time that morning before pulling her face away from Duncan's neck and realizing that he hadn't _actually_ jumped into some giant cannibal kettle that had somehow (probably provided by Chris) found its way to the resort. The water wasn't bubbling around them because it was boiling, it was because it was in the hot tub. And Duncan wasn't looking exactly happy that she'd just screamed in his ear, which she managed to at least feel a little sorry for even though it didn't seem like he was going to say anything about it.

Even in the water she didn't let go of him, or speak to him. She couldn't seem to remember how. But as the water swirled around them, carrying away the worst of the ooze covering her, her body slowly stopped shaking and began to relax and her mind started gathering itself together once more. The feeling of his hand settling on her back and beginning to rub slow circles against her spine, hidden under the churning water so nobody looking out at them from inside could see what he was doing, helped as well.

"...Everybody's going to be TO'd when they see that the hot tub needs to be cleaned out," she said quietly when she thought she finally had herself under control.

Duncan shrugged, and Courtney's entire body was shifted by the movement. "Screw them. If anybody complains, say they added some fancy spa garbage to the water."

"Duncan, the water's _green_."

"Some _green_ fancy spa garbage. Whatever. I kind've figured you'd start yelling if I tried giving you a shower, so I had to come up with another option." His hand finished one last circle against her back, then he seemed to take her finally being conversational as a sign to try pushing her away again. "Not that I wanna complain about you having your legs wrapped around me, Darling, but the water's never going to reach your front if you don't put some space between us."

It was the right thing to say to get her rocketing away to the other side of the hot tub where she could glare at him without any physical contact between them at all. Unless that was his foot she felt pressed against her ankle, which she was pretty sure it was. "God, Duncan, you couldn't keep from being a pig for _fifteen minutes?_ And you were doing so well when you kept your mouth shut."

"Different situation, Babe," he said, a smirk coming easily back to his face. "You don't bug a person in shock. Parents taught me that one."

"I was _not_ in _shock_. I was just a little upset."

"Oh, yeah, that was a _totally_ sane emotional reaction. No wonder you didn't jump during that task if _that's_ how being dunked in jelly makes you react. Never would've guessed it," he said, rolling his eyes so hard that for a moment they seemed to be mostly whites. "Like you'd just let me grab your ass in front of everyone if you were only 'a little upset.'"

"You didn't grab my ass and you know it!" she snapped at him. "You just picked me up."

"Still got an awfully good feel on the way out here," he said with an infuriating chuckle.

Her only response was to kick him in the shin as hard as she could. Unfortunately the water around them kept it from being as hard as she _wanted_.

It didn't seem to phase him at all. He just leaned back against the wall of the hot tub and asked, "So, if you were just a 'little' upset you wouldn't react too badly if I pointed out, say, that your hair and face are still covered in that crap?"

She shouted, and instantly started flinging water up at her face as quickly as she could, trying to get it _off_ her.

"That's what I thought," she heard him say, before he pushed himself forward through the water and grabbed her wrists. "Okay, stop _that_ before you hit yourself in the nose. Let me take care of it." He turned her around then pulled her backwards until her scalp was completely submerged, and bent up one of his legs so she could use his knee as a neckrest and not drown.

"It's not like I _can't_ act normally around green jelly," she said as he started working his fingers though her hair. There was some comfort in the fact that with her ears under water she couldn't hear him if he responded to her; it meant she wouldn't need to get annoyed if he said something stupid. "I mean, as long as I don't need to touch it, or, _ugh_, eat it, or... look at it, I'm totally fine after that initial reaction that Chris figured out my fear from. It's just that when I can't avoid coming in contact with it, well..." She avoided looking at him, which was a little difficult with his head bent right over her face. She settled for staring at the wall of the hot tub out of the corner of her eyes. "It's a _phobia_. 'Extreme and _irrational_' are what it's defined by. And it's never been anywhere close to that bad before. There was just so _much_ of it, out of _nowhere_." She closed her eyes and grimaced, muttering under her breath, "God, whatever Chris does to Bridgette and Leshawna had better be worse than this. I didn't even know they were making the stupid movie."

Duncan's hands worked at her hair for a few moments more, then one closed around the back of her head and nudged her to sit up, giving her a quick caress as he did so. "What's this about Chris and a movie?" he asked as soon as he ears were above water.

Courtney realized that she'd just said something she really shouldn't have. Luckily her flush could be blamed on the heat of the water. "Oh, it's the whole reason for this stupid mess," she said as she quickly scrambled for a lie. "Leshawna and Bridgette had some of the cameramen help them make this video scrapbook thing to remember the show with, and they let me watch it with them last night. But they got some footage that wasn't put in the show for it, Chris found out, and now he's punishing us for watching scenes that didn't make the air. As if we weren't _there_ when everything happened. I swear, I'm going to kill him for this."

"You'll have to get in line, Babe. But, tell you what. I like you enough to let you help out when _I_ go after him." Even though he was responding to what she'd said perfectly normally, his attention looked like it was totally focused on her hair. After a second he went, "Huh."

"What?" Her hands rose to her hair, patting at it to feel if anything seemed strange. "Oh, please tell me the chemicals in that stuff didn't make my hair start falling out," she said, her eyes trying to search through the now vivid green water for any loose hunks of hair floating around.

"Nah, nothing like that," he said. "Just looks like the jelly wants to stick around a little."

She clenched her teeth before yet another yelp could escape, and glared at him. "I'm not falling for that again, you jerk."

"Not making a joke here, Princess." He reached out to her again, lifting a wet lock of hair from her shoulder so she could see it. "Take a look; we match."

Like he said, there was now a definite hint of green in her hair. It wasn't nearly as bright as his, and only existed in streaks and splotches, but it was there. She snatched the hair out of his hand and stared at her, then exclaimed, "Oh no! I'm not the type of weirdo girl who changes her style to match her boyfriend!"

Her brain yelled at her that she'd said the completely wrong thing at the same time as his eyebrows shot up. "Boyfriend?"

"There... there's more than one definition for that word," she stammered. "Don't get the wrong idea!"

"Oh really, Darling?" he asked, already leaning much to far into her personal space, lifting one of his arm to brace himself against the edge of the hot tub behind him. "Because even 'boy, who is a friend' is more than you were willing to offer a couple of days again, and I can't think of another definition."

Before he could make another move she shoved herself sideways away from him, then pushed herself up out of the water. It was panic moving her more than anything, from the knowledge that if she didn't get away _then_ she probably wouldn't be able to bring herself to move away from him at all. "And even that one doesn't really fit a jerk who thinks it's a good idea to harass a girl right after a traumatic experience!" she snapped and forced herself to her feet even though leaving the heat of the hot tub make her dizzy. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go shampoo my hair before anyone _else_ starts thinking something crazy."

But she couldn't hold back a small smile when he called after her to offer, "All right, but I've got an extra bottle of dye if you change your mind and want to go all the way!" 


	8. Can't Fight This Feeling Anymore

Duncan could have spent the rest of the day whistling over how well things were going, if he were the type of dork who did things like that. He hadn't even been working on her for the past day, too busy hitting up anyone he thought might have brought souvenir money with them when they'd thought the show would be a glorified vacation for cash to fund the next part of his plan, but somehow she'd wound up warming up to him more anyway.

Not that he was happy about the cause of her thawing. He didn't really like thinking about how badly it had freaked him out when he'd heard her screaming from the hall outside of the dining room, at least once he'd realized that it was from fear instead one of her usual occasional outraged shrieks. Luckily DJ, too busy hacking up a lung to be staring at Courtney the way everyone else was (and because of that also the only one Duncan wouldn't have to think up some revenge on later for not doing squat to help her), was the only one who seemed to notice how he looked when he burst in there to see what was wrong, and he was one of the _very_ few people Duncan would trust to keep quiet about it without being threatened.

Still, he wasn't going to argue with the results. Plenty of clinging, not much in the way of violence or insults, his clothes might be ruined from the gunk she'd gotten on them but who cared? Not only was the woman still _totally_ into him, she was getting worse and worse at trying to pretend otherwise. Things could only go up from there.

With everything that had been happening he'd pretty much forgotten about what would be going on back at the Camp Wawanakwa. He hadn't even really thought about the show, aside from when a terrified-looking intern with casts on an arm and a leg had come up to him the day before asking if he could give them any dare ideas that 'please, please, please' wouldn't require safety testing. A lifetime of screwing with people for fun made that a question he could have answered in his sleep, and by the time he'd rattled off five ideas he'd already started turning away to go hit up Justin for some cash in the hopes the guy didn't have enough brain cells to remember they hadn't even really known one and other back on the island (it had turned out he was right- forty bucks worth of right). He had regret not stopping to think of anything _really_ nasty a little while later, just in case his dares went to Heather, but by then it was too late to change anything so he'd just forgotten about the whole thing.

He definitely hadn't thought about the fact that it had been three days since he'd come to the Playa des Losers, or what that meant. After so many weeks (pretty much since Courtney had left on the Boat of Losers, when he stopped to think about it) the days between the sudden excitement of the challenges had dragged on and on, mind-numbingly boring. Now that there were suddenly plenty of people around again (or maybe just the one), and lots of things to do to pass the time it felt like only half of one of those long days at the camp had passed.

So it was a little surprising when DJ suddenly grabbed his arm (and then let go again just as quickly at the glare it earned him) when he was on his way to the work-out area. "Come on, man!" he said, as he herded Duncan ahead of him towards the door leading out to the docks. "Boat of Losers is gonna get here any minute!"

"That's today?" he asked, picking up his step.

"Every three days, just like it's been since the beginning. How could you forget that?"

"Lost track of time, I guess." Now that they were getting near the dock he could see that pretty much everyone was gathering to see who had come in, even people like Ezekiel, who'd never had time to meet the three remaining Gophers, and Noah, who didn't actually seem to care about anything that was going on. When he thought back on it, he realized that the place had been crowded when he'd gotten off the boat too; he'd just been too busy looking around for Courtney to really notice it.

"I'm hoping for Owen," DJ said as they found a good place to watch for the boat coming in. "I know you're probably looking forward to getting your revenge, bro, but Heather played the hell outta this game. She and Gwen both deserve the final two a lot more than him."

"Plus, it'd be a lot cooler to see Gwen beat her in the final than to watch too cool people fighting it out," Geoff said, coming up on his other side with Bridgette.

There was a chorus of half-hearted agreement around them, though nobody actually sounded _happy_ of Heather making it to second place, or like they doubted for a second that Gwen would soundly whip her ass in whatever the final task was. Not that Duncan could blame them. _He_ wouldn't bet against the chick he'd watched kick the shit out of a crazy serial killer, Jeanie Bueller-style.

"Plus," he heard Beth say a couple of meters away, "I _totally_ don't want to deal with her for three more days."

That got a _much_ more emphatic round of agreements, and was probably the main reason for the low groan of disappointment that most of the group made when they spotted who was on the deck of the boat. Most of them turned around and went back to what they'd been doing right then, or, in Lindsay's case, kept walking back and forth with a confused look on her face as she tried to figure out whether or not she should be there when her former so-called 'friend' arrived.

Duncan was the only one who smiled when he spotted her, but it wasn't in any way a nice look. Geoff and DJ both backed away from him when they spotted it, even though they knew him well enough by then to realize that they were some of the few people around _relatively_ safe from his foul moods.

"H-hey, man," DJ stammered. "I know she messed things up for you, but you might wanna take time to cool down before you do something you'll regret."

"Oh, don't worry," Duncan said, and by then his grin had more teeth than a crocodile's and his eyes were glinting dangerously. "I've had enough time to think about _exactly_ what I want to do to her."

"I'll... go get help," he heard Bridgette whisper to Geoff, and then the boat was close enough that took off walking for it, at a slow stalking pace that wouldn't have looked out of place of the villain of a horror movie.

"_Heather_," he said through clenched teeth when the boat reached the dock. He reached out to grab her and bodily lift her from the deck, squeezing her arms against her sides hard enough that he sure _hoped_ it hurt.

But Heather didn't seem in the least bit fazed. She just stared at him coolly, her lips pursed like she'd just bitten into a lemon. Strange, how the same sort of fearless attitude towards him that made him so very attracted to Courtney just made him want to bang Heather's head into the wall until she realized there was good reason to be afraid of him. "_What?_" she snapped. "If you're still upset about the map, _get over it_. You stole from us too, and turnabout is fair play."

"Am I still mad about _the map?_" he repeated, and she'd managed to hit so close and yet so far to his actual problem with her that he couldn't help laughing slightly crazily (the craziness pretty much just effected to see if he could finally get her looking worried, but as long as it worked who needed to know that it was faked).

"Hey, why are you wearing my fear wig?" Lindsay piped up from behind him, and he craned his neck around to stare at her. It just figured that the ditz would be too dim to recognize a situation she should really keep her nose out of.

But Heather's reaction to the question was interesting. Her face went pale and her lips pressed tightly together for a moment before she quickly pulled herself together and said, "That's none of your business, Lindsay."

_Very_ interesting, but not the time to prod at it. "Get out of here, Barbie," he said to Lindsay over his shoulder. "Unless you want to risk getting blood on your shoes." At least that made her back away from them, although from the mincing steps she was taking he bet that she was more worried about ruining her shoes than she was about the possibility of bloodshed.

Heather narrowed her eyes at him. "Okay, _what_ is your problem?"

"My problem?" He whirled her around and slammed her into one of the poles at the end of the dock hard enough that she made a small noise of pain. "My problem is that your stupid snuggling act to get the map messed _everything_ up, and I'm not talking about getting voted out of the stupid game. You'd better be damned grateful that it looks like I can fix things, or you'd be a _lot_ worse off. But you're still about to learn that I have _no_ problem hitting a girl."

He let go of one of her arms, holding the other even more tightly to make sure she couldn't run, curled his hand into a fist, and drew his arm back.

"_Stop it!_"

He looked down and raised his eyebrows at Courtney, who was suddenly hanging off his arm, leaning back with her full weight to hold back his punch. "What's up, Princess?" he asked, his tone bizarrely mild for the position he was in. "I'd have figured you'd want this as much as I do."

"Are you _crazy?_" she asked, glaring at him as she kept trying to tug his arm down. "Have you completely forgotten where we are?"

"The isolation house. Still not getting where you're going with this, Princess, but if it'll make you happier I'll let _you_ hit her while I hold her."

Since he obviously wasn't moving his arm while she was still holding it, she risked letting go with one hand to slap herself in the forehead. "No, you idiot. We're in a place with cameras _everywhere._ You're the one who said the show is better than juvie, right? Well, what do you think you're going straight back to if they catch you beating her up without provocation on a dozen cameras?"

He stared down at Heather, who was already starting to look cockily sure that she was going to slither out of this situation without a scratch on her like she had so many times before, and snorted. "Sounds worth it to me," he said. "You'd be waiting for me when I got out, right Babe?"

"You wish," she snorted and tugged even harder on his arm, and he was starting to really notice the way her breasts pressed against his biceps as she pulled it back against herself. "I believe that you weren't interested in her, _okay?_ Now please don't do anything crazy. She's just a nasty, pathetic girl who's going to be punished badly enough when she ends up miserable and alone because having a pretty face doesn't make up for being a horrible, _horrible_, person."

"Excuse me? I am _right_ here," Heather said, glaring at her.

They both ignored her, but Duncan's arm finally slowly lowered. "Tell you what, Princess; I'll make a deal with you."

"What?" Both girls chorused, but his eyes were only on Courtney, the only sign he gave that he noticed Heather replying to him too was the hand on her arm tightening a little bit more to punish her for thinking he might be using Courtney's nickname on her.

"I'll let her go, if you'll do something with me tomorrow." Her eyes narrowed at him suspiciously, and he laughed at the look. "Come on, Princess, you just said that you believe I didn't cheat on you. You don't have any reason to turn me down now."

"Aside from regaining my sanity," she said, without much bite. Then she sighed, and released his arm in a sign of trust. "Okay, fine. But I'm not doing anything perverted. And you're _still_ not sleeping in my bed. I mean, we've never even been on a date!"

"Oh, we'll see about that," he said cheerfully, letting go of Heather and turning away from her like he hadn't just been ready to beat the hell out of her.

"_Finally!_" Heather quickly put a few feet of distance between them, eyeing Duncan wearily. "And, just so you know Courtney? Nobody who's interested in this slob has _any_ right to call _me_ pathetic. I mean, seriously, did you actually dye your hair to match him? Now _that's_ sad."

For a moment Courtney self-consciously touched the ends of her hair, which still had a few faint blotches of green in it that had refused to completely wash out. Then she suddenly straightened up, pushed her shoulders back, and looked Heather in the eye with a small smile on her lips that Duncan _knew_ meant trouble. "That reminds me, Heather," she said, walking to the other girl with quick steps. "Why _are_ you wearing that ugly wig?"

Before Heather could think to do anything, Courtney had snatched the wig off her head and flung it over the side of the dock into the lake in one swift movement.

Heather screamed and flung both of her arms over her head in an attempt to keep anyone from seeing what the wig had been hiding before breaking into a run for the door of the hotel. Duncan only caught a glimpse of the mangled wreck her hair had become out of the corner of his eye; he was too fixated of Courtney, who was watching the results of her action with a satisfied smirk playing across her lips.

After a minute she seemed to realize that he was staring at her and turned back to him, smile faltering. "What is it?"

"Oh, nothing Princess," he said, an honest grin spreading across his face no matter how hard he tried to turn it into a leer. "Just wondering if you could possibly turn me on more if you _tried_."

As he face went red and she turned to stomp away from him the smile on his face only grew. 


	9. Can't Stand the Night

"I can't _believe_ I trusted you to know what you were doing," Courtney said, taking a few hopping steps forward as she tried to catch herself after a stumbling. "_Why_ do I let you talk me into these things?"

"Because you find me completely irresistible," Duncan said cockily, absently spray-painting a bright line across the bark of a tree as they walked.

"More like because you _blackmailed_ me into it."

"Uh-huh. I blackmailed you with the possibility of losing _my_ freedom?" He raised an eyebrow and draped an arm over her shoulders. "Wonder what else I could 'blackmail' you into to keep me out of trouble." Finding out might even be more fun than actually breaking the law... at least for a little while.

"Oh, please. Don't get your hopes for too much," she said, but she didn't shrug his arm off, although her shoulder's stiffened under it. "Especially not if we don't get out of these woods soon."

Really, it had _seemed_ like a good idea when he'd come up with it. The night after Lindsay's stupid singing plan he'd gone back up onto the roof to get a good look at the area around the resort--and to freak out the people hanging out by the pool by chucking firecrackers at them--and had spotted a fuzzy blur of light pollution off in the distance. It was a sure sign that they were near either a city or, at the very least, a major highway that would hopefully have some fast food restaurants in the area. All it would take was a long enough hike, and they could see what having a normal date outside of the show would be like.

And she'd seemed to like the idea too, when he'd finally come to get her after night fell, just when she'd probably started to think he'd forgotten about the promise he'd gotten out of her the day before. He'd even seen a hint of the too-quickly-gone 'bad' Courtney in her eyes when he'd produced his grappling hook to get over the wall surrounding the building and she'd climbed over with surprising ease and no help at all. He suspected that she'd spent some of her time since leaving the game working out at the Playa des Losers' gym, because Lord knew she wouldn't take not being the best at physical challenges lying down.

But that had been close to three hours before, and he had to admit that the walk was a lot further than he'd thought. Maybe if they'd been on the city sidewalks he was used to back home it would have been faster (of course, back home they could have just gotten on a bus or grabbed a cab), but slogging through the dark, hilly, woods, with only the path he was marking so they could find their way back to let them know that they hadn't been going in circles, made it a much more difficult hike. Every so often they thought they heard traffic in the distance, and adjusted their course to keep heading for it, but they'd yet to actually reach a road, or even a footpath.

They'd had to leave while it was dark out, to have any chance of sneaking out without anyone noticing it and dragging them straight back, but he was starting to think that he should have pulled her out of bed before dawn instead of waiting all day so they could hit the nightlife of wherever the hell they were going.

Courtney looked at her watch, and made an annoyed noise. "Duncan, it's _midnight_. Even if we found a city, anywhere _I'd_ be willing to go would be closed by now, and just gave up and turned around it would be three in the morning before we got back. And I'm _already_ tired!"

Duncan stopped and leaned against a tree, tucking his paint-can under his arm and tapping the flashlight he was carrying against his palm as he thought about what to do. There was a whine in her voice that he didn't like, even though he could understand it, and he knew that it would only get worse the longer he kept her marching on with no sleep. He liked her when she was yelling at him, insulting him, or even physically attacking him; not so much when she was whining at him.

For that matter, he knew that _he_ would get meaner the later it got. He wouldn't give a damn about that at almost any other time or with any other person, but it really wouldn't help with what he was trying to accomplish by bringing her out there.

After a minute he made his decision, and lowered himself to the ground with his back against the tree. "All right. Looks like we're camping out here tonight."

She stared at him like he was insane. "No. No, no. The best thing about being cheated out of the show was that I'd _never_ need to sleep outside in the mud again."

He ignored her complaints, occupying himself with shifting around to find a comfortable position and digging out a rock that was poking him in the back. "We can find the town in the morning. One more night out won't kill you, Princess."

"You don't know that! Back on the island the cameramen were around to wake us up if we were about to get eaten by bears, or to get us to safety if we were ever in real danger." She paused to consider what she just said, then pragmatically added, "Well, hopefully. Depending on just how far Chris is willing to go for ratings."

"He doesn't have the stones. He freaked out just as much as all the others when he saw Gwen about to get her ass murdered." Duncan decided against mentioning that he'd been part of the 'all the others' on the off chance that when that episode aired no footage would make it to the air which made it look like he was running off with the group for any other reason than to try beating up a _real_ hook-handed psycho killer.

"Okay, great, he's not as much of a nutcase as he acts like he is. So we were safer out there." She kicked at Duncan's leg, trying to get him to stand. "Will you _please_ get up? You can't seriously want to sleep out here."

"Don't see why not. Dirt's a lot softer than the hall floor." He grabbed her leg and pulled when she tried kicking him again, sending her sprawling down on top of him. "Just give up, Princess," he said, wrapping an arm around her waist to keep her from standing up. "I'm not going anywhere, and you know you don't want to walk through the woods alone at night. Without my flashlight."

She sat up as much as she could with him holding her in place, and narrowed her eyes at him. "You wouldn't."

He flashed her a grin. "Hey, I need that light. How else am I gonna see where I'm going if I need to run from a bear?"

She let out a low shout of frustration, then let her head fall heavily to his chest. "_Fine_," she said, defeated.

"That's more like it," he said, folding his free arm behind his head. "Promise you, Princess, tomorrow'll make up for it. We'll do whatever the hell you want for fun, even if it's something nuts like hanging around city hall trying to make friends with whatever small-time politicians they've got around here."

"You never know what connections will be important in the future," she said in the monotonous drone of a person repeating something they've explained a million times before. Then she fell silent for a time, and he was starting to think she'd drifted right off when she quietly admitted, "...I don't understand why you're trying so hard. Not when there are only three... no, two, days left before we'll probably never see each other again."

"Don't see why not," he said, absently fingering the ends of her hair and carefully not looking down at her.

"Because we're going home after that, and we don't even live in the same province?" she said, sounding like she was three seconds and a small amount of self-control away from adding '_Duh_' to her words.

He thought for a second, tapping his fingers against her shoulder, then asked, "Want to know a secret, Princess?"

"Hmm?"

"The reason I wanted the prize money? Law says you can move out on your own once you're sixteen, if you've got enough cash to support yourself. There's no way my parole officer would let me do it now, but pretty soon now I'll be kissing him good-bye for good. ...Or for awhile, anyway." He stared up at the stars above them, keeping his voice flat and his face blank in case she looked up at him. Until then he'd been sure to never even hint to anyone that he was on the show for any reason other than burning off some of his time on parole on something at least a little interesting, or let anyone know that he had plans for that prize if he won it. He couldn't risk it getting back to his family, when they could make it a hell of a lot harder to pull off. But now the nearest camera was miles away, and if he couldn't trust Courtney at least enough to believe she wouldn't spill the beans when they were back under constant surveillance there really wouldn't be much reason to think they could make things work, would there? "The hundred-thousand bucks would've been better, but the consolation prize for fourth-place is nothing to sneeze at, and I've been saving up for a while already. The original plan was just to get as far away from home as I could, but having a destination to head for would be even better."

Courtney shoved herself back up to stare down at him so suddenly that his arm fell off of her. "Duncan, that's completely insane."

"Don't start thinking this is about _you_, Princess. I've been planning to get the hell out of there ASAP for years, it was just bad luck that I got thrown in juvie last year and couldn't go through with it right away." He closed his eyes and did his best to look like he was completely relaxed. "But if I'm getting away anyway, why not?"

"Why not? _Why not?_ You hardly even know me, you idiot. I shouldn't need to explain why that's a crazy idea!"

"I know you well enough to know I'd like to know you better, Darling."

"Oh, is that so? Then what... What's the first thing I ever lost at? Anyone who really knows me at all would be able to answer that."

He finally opened his eyes to look up at her, and in a flash he had the answer. There was no doubt in his mind that he was right, everything he knew about her told him that there was only one possibility. "You're trying to pull a trick question on me, aren't you Princess? The answer is 'Total Drama Island', unless you want to count completely failing at hiding how much you want me coming before that."

She gaped at him. "How... how did you...?" she stammered, but he just smiled smugly up at her. After a second her expression firmed again; she never did remain flustered for long. "Okay, smart guy, how about this? _What's my job?_"

And that was a much tougher one. "Probably something like volunteering for any political campaigns you can get into so you can cozy up to the people in charge. Or maybe candy striping, or something else that'll make you look like a real sweetheart on your college applications."

"...Volunteer work isn't a job. I meant what I make money doing." But he knew from her slight hesitation that he'd hit the nail on the head, even if it wasn't the work she'd meant. It was too bad that it was too dark out to make out more than a vague impression of the look on her face, because he was pretty sure she'd be blushing and that was always fun to watch.

"Fine, you're right. But it's not like you know what _I_ do either."

She threw her hands in the air in frustration. "Well, yeah. That's my whole point!" But after a moment she leaned down over him again, and examined him closely. "But, okay, let's see... If you've really been planning on moving away for so long, it would have to be something legal. Maybe something that pays you a little bit under the table, but you'd need the official records to show that you can make enough money to support yourself. Plus, having a good normal job would help keep your parole officer happy. They wouldn't have you dealing with customers, because you'd just scare them off, but it couldn't be something where you're off in a back room washing dishes or doing paperwork or anything like that because you'd be bored senseless and end up lighting their trash can on fire or something within a week."

She reached up to ruffle his hair, then glide her finger down the side of his face to find his ear and tweak one of his earring. He shivered at the feeling of her fingers grazing his face, but she seemed oblivious to the effect she had on him, too busy trying to puzzle out the answer. "Nothing with a dress code, _obviously_. Probably something with flexible hours and a very understanding boss, so if it's ever slow and you start getting criminal urges you can take them elsewhere before you get yourself fired. And it would have to be something you could do anywhere, so you'd know you'd be able to find work somewhere else once you moved away... Okay! I think you work for something like a garage or mechanic. A popular one, so there's always something for you to do to keep your hands and brain occupied, but probably not one that's part of any big chain."

Duncan hated to admit it, but she'd pretty much read him like a book. The only thing she was missing was that the owner of the garage was an old friend of his dad's. He'd known the guy would hire him on in the hopes of helping him straighten up his act and to give him some sort of non-criminal skill for the future for his old man's sake, and that as a family friend who'd feel guilty if he starved on the streets he'd give Duncan one hell of a recommendation when he took off and needed to find work elsewhere. On the downside, with the names of the places Duncan was applying he'd be able to let his parents know right where to search for him, but he'd cross that bridge when he came to it.

"I'm impressed, Princess. But that just gives you even less ground to stand on when you say we don't know each other well enough to try dating."

"I'm not talking about dating! I'm talking about moving hundreds of miles!" She thumped his chest lightly with her fist. "You can't possibly be as obtuse about what's wrong with the idea as you're acting."

"And _you_ need to start listening to what I'm saying, Babe. Do I need to slow it down for you?" He began to speak at a drawn-out pace, tapping her in the center of the forehead with his fingertip at each word like he was trying to drive them into her skull. "I. Was. Gonna. Move. Far. Away. Anyway. But, fine. You think we need to know more about each other before we can live in the same city, even though I'll probably end up in a part of it you never go to and we can avoid ever running into each other again if things don't work out? Ask me anything you want, but _I_ get to ask questions back. And can keep my mouth shut about anything I don't want to talk about."

She looked down at him suspiciously, but the promise of information was apparently too much for her to resist and after a minute she said, "Okay, tell me about your family. They can't possibly be as bad as all this 'I want out of there _now_' talk makes them sound."

"They're not... _bad_," he grudgingly admitted. "We get along fine whenever we can avoid each other most of the time. There's just this sort've family curse."

"'Family curse,'" she repeated dryly.

"_Yes_, a family curse. One that makes every damn member of the family, _on both sides_, grow up to become cops. And then marry other cops, and have kids who become cops. The last time a family member didn't join the force was in my great-grandparents' day, and that's just because they wouldn't let women join up back then." His hand clenched around her arm as he tried to make her imagine his insane family. "Princess. Princess, do you have any idea what it's like to have _thirty-two_ police officers in your family, every last one of them ready to call you out the second they see you put one step out of line to try making sure you stay on the straight and narrow?"

She blinked at him for a minute, then burst into giggles. "Oh my God, _Duncan_. Please don't tell me you act the way you do just to lash out at your cop family."

"No, I 'act' the way I do because I'm not gonna pretend to be some goody-goody I'm not just to make my cop family happy. Laugh all you want, Princess, but just you wait. One day I'll drag you to a family reunion, and you'll see what it's like for yourself."

"I doubt it could possibly be that horrible for normal people. I've always been a model citizen, after all."

"Doesn't matter. The second you're through the door they'll be judging you. _Especially_ since you're with me." He fell silent for a second, trying to think if there was anything he missed, then added, "I've got four little brothers too. They aren't half bad. Hopefully by now I've shown 'em they don't need to follow in the whole family's footsteps. But seriously, Babe, if I don't get out of there while me and my parents can still kind've stand each other I'll just end up getting my ass disowned one of these days and then we'll end up being one of those crazy families that can't be in the same room without screaming at each other. Trust me on this one." It really wasn't as bad of a thought to him as it probably would be to most people, but he'd still rather it not turn out that way. They could get along just fine as long as they only saw each other from time to time, but when they were around each other all the time--say, because he was on parole and couldn't take off for a few days whenever they started to grate on each other to much--everything went to hell. "Okay, Princess, that was your question. My turn. Let's see now... What color are your panties?"

She hit him in the ribs in response, and he wheezed out a laugh.

"Aw, don't feel like sharing? Fine, then instead of that the same question. What's _your_ family like, Princess?"

"I don't know," she shrugged. We're just... normal. I don't have any siblings, so my parents have always been very focused on making sure I got started on the right path through life early on. ...Perhaps a little _too_ focused, I've started suspecting lately, but I know that they just want what's best for me. When I was younger we used to move around a lot because of my father's job, but they always made sure to sign me up for extracurricular activities right away so I could make connections with other children in the area right away."

"'Connections?' Weird way to talk about making friends, Babe."

Even though he hadn't even been _trying_ to needle her with the comment, he was surprised to feel her entire body go stiff against his. "I have enough friends," she said in the tone that clearly said the subject was off limits.

"Uh..."

"_Next question!_ What do you plan on doing with your life?"

"Not a clue." She made a shocked noise, like that was the most insane thing she'd ever heard in her life, and he rolled his eyes. "Would 'anything that's not joining the police force or getting caught doing something that'd get me tossed in real jail' be a more acceptable answer to you? Hate to be the one to break this to you, Princess, but _most_ people? Don't have their entire life planned out by the time they're sixteen."

"They do if they want to win at life."

"Never really cared that much if my little plastic guy wound up at Millionaire Estates or Countryside Acres. So, what's this job of yours? You got me curious."

She lapsed into silence again for a minute, her fingers tapping thoughtfully against his arm, then she shook her head. "No."

"No? I was kinda thinking that'd be an _easy_ one, Babe."

"No." She let her head fall to his chest, returning to the position she'd been in before their talk had begun. "I'm too tired to keep playing this game, Duncan. I'll make you a deal instead."

There were very few things she could have said to interest him more, unless she suddenly lost her mind and decided it was time to get naked. "I'm listening."

"If you know me well enough to make moving out to my area so we can date at _all_ not crazy, and I _don't_ need you to tell me you were planning on moving that far away anyway _again_, you'll be able to figure out what I do when we're in town tomorrow. No getting on the internet to try finding out there, no, I don't know, calling up the producers and asking _them_, you need to work it out on your own."

"And if I do?"

"I'll stop telling you you're insane, even though you are. I'll even help you find an apartment that isn't in a completely horrible area if you want."

"All right, Princess. You've got yourself a deal." He settled down for sleep himself, and as his eyes fell shut he said, "You might as well just admit right now you're hoping I'll win. We both know it's true."

Her reply was soft enough that he wouldn't have been able to make it out if it hadn't been such a quiet night. "Well, it wouldn't be _completely_ objectionable. Even if it's nuts." 


	10. Can't Define the Girl

**Note:** Hello everyone! Sorry for the long gap between updates, but at least this is the longest chapter of the fic! There's only one more chapter and an epilogue to go after this, and I'm hoping to get them both done before the finale airs in the US this week and possibly ends up changing the ending suddenly turning the last chapter of this fic AU for more of you.

One important note: I'm afraid that I won't be able to respond to every review I get anymore. Ever since the site changed their login page it crashes my usual browser every time I go to it, which suddenly turns getting responses out to anybody ten times as much of a hassle. So I'll just thank you all in advance; every time I see that I've gotten a new comment it completely makes my day. And if you really want to hear from me for some reason, the simplest way to get around the site sucking for me is just to log out and leave an anonymous comment with an email I can respond to. Or follow the link in my profile to my livejournal and leave a comment on whatever unrelated entry is on top at the time, whichever!

Okay, I won't keep blathering at you. On with the fic!

* * *

When Duncan woke up the next morning, Courtney was gone. Even though they were in the middle of the woods and she hadn't stopped to wake him up before taking off he didn't worry about it for a second, and, really, if there were some way of prying open his head and showing it to her he figured that should be as much proof as she'd ever need that he'd never been interested in Heather. The second that he'd woken up the day he was booted off the island and realized that Heather was gone he'd felt an immediate sense of dread, even before he remembered that they were in the middle of a challenge or noticed that he could no longer feel the map scratching at his stomach. He felt pretty much the same way _every_ time he knew the crazy bitch was around but wasn't sure exactly where or what she was up to.

He never got that feeling with Courtney, even when there was the possibility that she was running around telling people that he was _nice_ behind his back or something. When she wasn't around he wanted to know what she was up to just because... he wanted to know what she was up to, not because he expected her to stab anyone and everyone in the back the second she thought it would be useful and was given half a chance.

He took advantage of her absence to empty his bladder against a tree, then went searching for her. "Courtney? Babe?" he yelled, hoping that she'd stayed within earshot, but he didn't get any reply. At least she'd swiped his can of spray paint when she'd taken off, leaving him a trail of much neater marks than the random blotches he'd left everywhere to follow. He didn't know why she'd decided to backtrack at an angle to their original trail, but he figured she must have her reasons.

He'd walked a few minutes when he started to hear the sound of running water in the distance, and began to figure out what she was up to. "Hey, _Princess!_" he called out to her again, assuming that if he was close enough to hear the water he was close enough for her to hear him. "I'm giving you one warning! If you didn't want me seeing you naked, you shouldn't make a path right to where you're bathing!"

"As if I'd give you the chance!" he heard her yell back distantly, and he picked up his pace at the confirmation that she was close by.

Like she'd said, she wasn't undressed, hadn't even removed her top layer, when he reached her. She was crouched by the side of the stream she'd found, doing her best to work little twigs and leaves out of her hair and wash away dirt without getting any mud on her already messy clothes. "There are blueberries on that bush over there," she said, sparing a hand to wave him towards it then going right back to scrubbing herself, too occupied with trying to get clean to even look his way. "It's not really enough to fill up on, but they're better than nothing."

"Sweet!" he exclaimed, rushing straight to the bush to start tearing off berries with both hands. "And here I thought we'd have to starve until we found the town."

Courtney paused in her cleaning to shoot him a very unimpressed look. "That's it. I am _never_ being stupid enough to follow you into a strange place again."

"I don't know who you think you're fooling, Darling," he said cheerfully. "You'd follow me anywhere."

"I don't know who you think _you're_ fooling, _Darling_," she mimicked back at him. "I'm not the one who keeps sleeping in front of your door. Everybody knows that you're the one who's... who's _whipped_."

A moment later she was giggling wildly into her hand at the look on his face, as he gaped at her unable to even come up with a response for a second.

"I'm whipped? _I'm_ whipped?" he finally sputtered out, advancing on her with his hands clenched into fists. "_Newsflash_, Princess: I don't get whipped. Tell me who said that, and I'll make sure they're too afraid of me to even think it again."

She gained enough control over her giggles to smirk at him slightly, and he couldn't help thinking it was a good look on her. "Well, _I_ just said it, and I'm not afraid at all. You're not any scarier than a kitten, to me."

"A kitten," he repeated, so outraged at that thought that his brain seemed to short out somewhere and make the words come out in a deadpan flat instead of suitable pissed off.

"That's right. With me. It might bite and claw, but it can't do any real damage and you know it doesn't mean anything by it." She made a show of turning away from him to go back to her cleaning, an obvious dismissal if there ever was one, but a moment later she spoke again, lowly and with a slight hesitation like she wasn't entirely sure she should be talking. "...And you know it will stop and purr if you just scratch it the right way."

He stared down at her, his brain stumbling to a halt for a second although it started back up again admirably quickly. When it did, he was suddenly hit with realization that she _had_ to be throwing him off balance on purpose, her little revenge for having to sleep in the woods because of him. And it was annoying, and infuriating, and _insanely_ hot. No other girl would dare poke at him that way without any hint of either fear or Heather's type of malicious bitchiness. It was like every day she was coming up with new ways to show him that he just wasn't crazy enough about her yet. It'd be a crying shame, the day she finally ran out of them.

"All right, Princess," he said, kicking off his shoes so he could kneel in front of her even though there was only room if he was partly in the river, and leaning forward to plant his hands on either side of her body. "I'm game. Show me how you'd make me purr."

She blushed brightly and tried to lean away, but he just moved in closer. "Please, Duncan, it was just a metaphor. You shouldn't read too much into it."

"Don't back down _now_, Babe. Or would you like it better if I were the one who made _you_ purr?" It was his turn to smirk as he pressed in closer still, and though she backed up even more one of her hands covered one of his, apparently without consulting the rest of her body.

Then all at once she was leaning back just a little too far and overbalanced, falling backwards onto the bank of the stream.

"_Duncan!_" she shrieked, and he wistfully said goodbye to any chance of her 'scratching him the right way' that morning. "I can't believe this! I'm covered in mud, and it's all your fault!"

"So next time you'll know that you shouldn't run away."

The comment earned him a face full of flung mud, a second before she sat up again and shoved him backwards into the creek.

"That's it," she said as she went back to trying to wash herself off, this time just shoving her scalp into the water and not worrying about keeping her clothes clean as she did her best to scrub the mud out of her hair. "The first thing we're doing is finding a clothing store. _You_ might not care if everyone thinks you're too grunge to live, but I'm not spending the day covered in filth."

o 0 O 0 o

The town was surprisingly easy to find from there, once he happened to spot an empty coke can trapped in some weeds further upstream and realized that they could probably follow the creek to civilization. Or at least a road. A clothing shop wasn't even that hard to hunt down, he was able to find one right on the outskirts of town.

A clothing shop that she approved of, that might be a different story.

"A secondhand store?" Courtney asked, giving the place he'd found a doubtful look. "Duncan, castoffs don't really give off the professional impression I try to maintain."

"Tough luck, Princess," he said, pressing his hand against her back and herding her towards the door. "I don't have the cash to buy you a brand new outfit, and it's not like you'd want to walk through town looking for someplace you like better while covered in mud anyway."

"_You_ can't afford?" She raised an eyebrow at him, and he got the feeling that she was amused at the thought. "I wasn't planning on making you pay for my clothes, Duncan. What kind of crazy date do you think I am?"

"The kind who doesn't have anymore cash than anyone _else_ brought on this crazy show."

Her lips twitched into a small smirk that would have been much more at home on his face. "I don't have any cash, no," she said, before reaching into her pocket and flashing a small plastic card at him, "but debit's so much more convenient, don't you think?"

"You mean to tell me I spent a day begging money from those jerks back at the hotel for _nothing_?"

"Not for nothing. You can still pay for date things, but I'm not going to make you spend all your money on things just for me." Suddenly, she smiled at him brightly. "I'll even pay for _your_ clothes, as long as you pick something that doesn't look messy. Having you look nice when we're out can be another treat to myself."

A bell over the store's door rang when they pushed it open, and the girl sitting behind the checkout counter mumbled a half-hearted greeting, barely looking up from the magazine she was reading for a second. Then a moment later her head shot up and she stared at them. Or, rather, at their mud-drenched clothes. "Oh my god," she said. "What the hell happened to you two?"

Courtney blushed scarlet, but Duncan just grunted and held up a hand to ward off any other questions. "Accident in the woods," he said. "Trust me, you don't care about the whole story. We're just here to buy something clean to wear before anybody sees us."

"Okay, um, girls clothes are on that side of the store, guys are one the other," she said, gesturing illustratively. "Shoes are in the back if you need them, and the changing stalls are next to them. Try... not to touch many things. I _probably_ shouldn't even let you be in here looking like that, but..." she pulled a face, making it clear just how gross she thought they looked. "I'd have to be a pretty heartless bitch to make you run around town looking like that."

"_Thank you_," Courtney said with feeling, already moving to the nearest clothing rack. Duncan followed close behind.

"Yeah, no problem," the girl said, already going back to her magazine. "Just do me a favor and hide if anyone else comes in. I don't want word getting back to my boss that I risked getting mud on our clothes."

Even though Duncan suspected that watching a girl clothes shopping was probably one of the most boring things in the world, he didn't really feel like leaving her to go do his own shopping. It wasn't like he'd be away from her long even if he did; all he had to do was find a cheap pair of jeans and a cheaper tee-shirt and he'd be done. It wasn't like he cared much what his clothes looked like, as long as they weren't, like, _pink_ or anything.

As Courtney gingerly plucked a shirt out of the rack, very careful not to get it dirty, Duncan amused himself by glancing over the other clothes the store had, searching out things she'd _never_ wear and imagining how she'd look in them.

Then he saw _it_.

"Oh _Darling_," he said, calling out to her in a sing-song tone with a wide smirk. He lifted the hanger from the rack, pulling the outfit out from where it was crammed unobtrusively between a bright red furry jacket and a tiny white tank top. "I've found your new look."

She glanced at him for half a second before rolling her eyes and returning to examining a skirt. "Yeah, like that's ever going to happen."

It could be called a dress only by the loosest of definitions, nothing more than the bare minimum of leather required to keep the wearer from breaking decency laws held together by not all that much more fishnet. "Come on, Princess," he said, wheedling, "at least try it on. You _know_ there's a little voice in the back of your mind wondering how you'd look in it."

She frowned, resolutely not even looking back at it again. "Look, I know I had some sort of psychotic break that last day on the island, but I got _over_ it when I got out of there and everything stopped being constantly insane. There is no 'Bad Courtney' deep down inside wondering how I'd look in sleazy clothes."

"Bullshit, Babe. You know as well as I do that you wouldn't even _be_ here if that wasn't a giant lie." He pressed the handle of the hanger into her hand which was holding the shirt she'd picked out, and she didn't let go. "No cameras here, nobody else's gonna see it but me, so why not try it on?"

He could practically _see_ her giving in, and after a moment she exhaled heavily and slapped the skirt she'd been looking at together with the rest of the clothes. "_Fine_. I'll put it on for just a minute, and then you'll _never_ speak of it again."

"Whatever makes you happy."

Duncan sprawled out onto the chair provided for people waiting outside the changing stalls, not caring that he was probably going to leave it filthy. The stalls were the sort that only had curtains hanging across the front to block the person within from view, and the curtain was short enough for him to watch her calves as she changed. Not the biggest thrill in the world, since her usual capris left her lower legs bare anyway, but it was still a little exciting to watch her kicking off her pants. Which was, he had to admit, pretty much the saddest thing in the world. Just how stupid had he gotten over her, that he'd be happy with scraps like that?

Even as he was thinking this, the curtain shot open and there she was in the dress. "_Well?_" she asked. "Are you happy now?"

He looked her up and down, a grin slowly crawling across his face. It didn't fit her quite right and she was clearly uncomfortable, one hand tugging the bottom of the dress down, the other arm crossed tightly across her chest, and her entire face had gone flaming red. But somehow that just made it _hotter_; that she'd wear it for _him_ even though she'd obviously never even have considered putting it on on her own. That even with all her embarrassment she was still meeting his eyes, waiting to hear what he had to say about it. That she even gave a shit what he had to say.

"You have got to be the hottest girl I've ever met, Princess," he said with complete honesty, and he wouldn't have thought it was possible for her to blush any brighter but somehow she managed it. "Gotta say, though, your usual style fits you a lot better. Guess I was wrong about finding your new look."

She smiled at him suddenly, fondly, her eyes as warm as he'd ever seen them, but all she said was, "Good thing, because I'm still never wearing anything like this again."

She snapped the curtain shut again without any warning, and he took that as his cue to head over to the men's section and start looking for his own outfit.

He couldn't keep himself from grinning all the way there.

o 0 O 0 o

"I feel so much better!" Courtney said as they left the store in their new outfits, swinging the bag which held her old clothes idly at her side. "Maybe we could find a hairdresser next; I haven't had a trim since before I left home, and I'm starting to get all shaggy."

"Oh no, Princess. I'm not doing _anything_ else until I've had some grub."

"Boy, Duncan, 'we'll do whatever you want tomorrow' didn't last long, did it?" Courtney asked, rolling her eyes, but a second later her stomach rumbled loudly enough that Duncan could hear it from where he was standing. Courtney went faintly red. "Okay, food before anything else. Let's try to find somewhere with waffles."

"Denny's it is," he said cheerfully. They reached a crossroad and he peered down it in every direction, trying to judge which way looked most likely to take them to a commercial district.

"Somewhere _good_ with waffles."

"Hey now, Babe, don't diss Denny's. There's no place better when you're hungry at four in the morning."

"What would you even be doing _out_ at four in the morning?" she asked, then quickly seemed to think better of the question and held her hands up in front of herself. "No, no, forget I asked. I'm sure I don't want to know."

"You sure?" he asked, draping an arm over her shoulders and flashing a smirk that shifted into something more like a smile when she didn't pull away. "I've got some stories even you'd have to admit sound fun."

She looked unconvinced, but before she could say anything else a high-pitched squeal rang out behind him.

On pure instinct Duncan whirled around and blurted out, "I didn't do it, and you've got _no_ proof!"

"Didn't do _what?_" Courtney hissed at him out of the corner of her mouth, while plastering on her best first-impression-smile for the girl approaching them.

"I've got no clue," he muttered back.

But the girl didn't look at all like she was upset. "Oh my god, oh my god, _oh my god!_" she shrieked, waving her hands in the air as she ran up to them in a way that reminded Duncan of Katie and Sadie. "You're... you're... Oh my god, you're _you!_ From Total Drama Island! Duncan and Courtney!" The look in her eyes was frighteningly fanatical.

"No we're not," Courtney lied quickly and easily, before Duncan could even think of a response that didn't involve turning tail and running.

"You're... not?" the girl repeated, her zealous smile faltering for just a second before growing back as wide as ever. "Oh, that's a joke, right? Ha ha!"

"No joke. See, I'm really sorry, but we're just body doubles. They just finished filming the last episode of the show a few days ago, and hired us to go around drawing attention to ourselves so they could go out without being mobbed." She smiled politely and held a hand out for the girls to shake. "I'm Amy; Courtney's cousin."

Quickly picking up the act, Duncan added, "They'd probably want us to tell you we really are them, but we're not getting paid enough to bother."

Duncan was surprised at just how crushed the girl looked. "Really?" she asked. "But you look _just_ like them."

"I'll let you in on a secret; part of that's editing," Courtney told her in a conspiratorial tone. "They had doubles for everyone picked out before the show began filming, and you'd never know it but everybody in the show was touched up a little to look more like theirs."

Duncan smirked as a wicked thought came into his mind. He knew he'd pay for it later, but decided that it was too good to resist. "Yeah, like, the real Courtney? You'd never guess it watching the show, but she has this _huge_ mole on her neck. Really gross. I saw it when we were driving out here."

Retribution came faster than he'd expected, from Courtney's elbow jamming into his ribs. "Don't insult my cousin, _Cornelius_. It's not like Duncan's so flawless." She turned back to the girl, lowering her voice. "_Massive_ cold sores. I don't know how Courtney could stand to kiss him."

The girl seemed to completely ignore most of their conversation, latching onto the one part that mattered to her. "Wait wait wait, so the real Duncan and Courtney _are_ in town somewhere?"

"Yeah, but they've got that whole 'celebrity trying to stay out of sight' look going on, so that's what you want to look out for," Duncan told her.

"High-collared coats, big sunglasses, hats, that type of thing," Courtney added. "They were dropped off on the other side of town, but I bet you can find them if you search!"

The girl practically bounced in place at the news. "I've got to call all my friends, and let them know!"

"Just make sure to warn them that if they see a Courtney and Duncan walking around _without_ disguises it's not really them," Courtney said with what he could tell was false chipperness. Then, when the girl started to walk away without even bothering to say goodbye to their 'non-famous' selves she quickly called after her, "Wait a sec; can you recommend anywhere where we could get a good breakfast? Especially one with waffles!"

The girl didn't stop walking in her rush to get started with the great Duncan and Courtney search, but she looked over her shoulder and called back, "Breakfast? Um... keep walking down this road a couple of blocks, then turn left and look for Kelly's Kitchen. That's pretty good."

"Thanks!" Courtney called back, then turned on her heel to glare at Duncan. "A _mole?_"

"Hey, you're the one who brought up editing, Princess."

"And you couldn't have made up lies about _Harold_ or someone?"

"Yeah, like it would be a huge shocker to anyone that _Harold_ doesn't look so good. And you were happy to play along, you little liar." He draped an arm around her again--this time she didn't let it stay on her for long--and leaned in close. "I liked what you came up with for me, by the way. Now everybody's gonna know that you're _so_ into me you'd risk getting oral herpes to kiss me."

"I... you... you _know_ I didn't mean..." Courtney stammered, then flung her arms into the air with an annoyed noise and began storming off down the road. "I'm not dealing with you on an empty stomach."

o 0 O 0 o

"Did I have good timing, or what?" Duncan asked.

Courtney rolled her eyes at him. "You didn't have any _choice_ in the timing. You were on the island until this week, and we're all going home tomorrow."

"Picky, picky. Is this _lucky_ timing, or what? Better?"

They were in a cab driving them across town, a move Duncan had been a little wary of at first--he didn't want to waste a cent of his hard-earned date money on anything they didn't need--but he'd quickly become glad that they hadn't tried walking to their destination as it became clear that the 'town' was more of a city than he'd thought.

When he'd been thinking how their day would go he hadn't had any real plans in mind; he'd figured he'd try steering things towards the standard meals, a movie, maybe hitting a club if she didn't insist on starting their hike through the woods well before sunset this time, but he had no idea what type of activities someone like Courtney would want to add to the list. Then, at the restaurant, they'd spotted a flier saying that the area's local fair was in town for its last day that day and it became obvious what they should do.

"Okay, lucky," she agreed, then she leaned her head against the door of the cab and closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them to speak again, she suddenly sounded almost plaintive. "Okay, I have to know: aren't you planning on making _any_ guesses? I mean, I was expecting that all day long I'd be telling you that you got one wrong, but instead... nothing."

_Ha_, he _knew_ she'd be more into the idea of him living nearby than she let on. If she wasn't, she'd have kept her mouth shut all day and hoped that he'd forgotten their deal, and she sure as hell wouldn't have been disappointed if she thought he wasn't trying. He couldn't resist smirking a little when he answered, "Nope."

"_No_," and that was _definitely_ hurt in her voice now.

"I'm not gonna make a single guess, Sweetheart," he told her. "When I give you an answer, it'll be the one I _know_ is right."

It was amazing how fast she could switch to looking annoyed at him, even when he was giving her an answer he knew she'd be happy with. He was starting to suspect that it was her default expression for him, for all the times she didn't know or didn't want to show whatever she was really feeling underneath it. "Good luck with that," she said. "But I can guarantee that you're not going to find any hints at the fair."

"Or maybe you're just saying that so I won't find out about your secret past as a carny." He leaned in towards her, close enough to lower his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, "You can tell me, Princess: did I ruin your job in the sideshow as the world's most uptight girl by helping you pull that stick out of your ass?"

She narrowed her eyes at him. "Do you _want_ me to tell the cab driver to let me out right now? Because you're doing an awfully good job of convincing me to."

"That'd be an awfully rude way to respond to a compliment."

"God, Duncan, are you _always_ this infuriating to your dates, or am I just special?"

"Oh, you're definitely something special, Princess."

She didn't seem to know how to respond to that, and just turned to look out her the window. It was a good thing, because he wasn't sure how that had managed to slip out or what the hell he'd say if she tried questioning him about it anyway.

The rest of the trip passed in silence, which mostly lasted until he'd bought their all-day passes for the rides and they entered the fairgrounds. "All right, Sweetheart," he said, glancing around the booths lining the area. "See any prizes you want from a game involving guns, darts, or strength, and I'll get it for you, no problem. Arrows I can try, but my aim with bows is pretty much a crapshoot."

"Save the macho posturing for later, Duncan. We're at a fair! I want to go on some rides." With the fair in front of her, she suddenly seemed much more excited about it than she had in the entire time since they'd seen the flier. So excited that she forgot herself and grabbed his hand as she made a beeline for the closest ride, the ferris wheel.

"Wouldn't have pegged you for a fan of carnival rides," he said, allowing himself to be dragged along.

"My mom and dad always took me to the closest local fair to wherever we were living whenever it was in town. It was one of the only things we did every year that was just for fun, nothing else," she said in explanation. "I didn't think I'd get to go this year, since it happened when I was on the show."

"Uh-huh," he said, adding that little detail to his mental vault of information about her. "I hope you're ready for that to change."

"What?" she asked, clearly not having the least idea what he was getting at.

"See, _I_ do things 'just for fun' _way_ more often than a couple of times a year. Hell, most of the things I do are just for fun. And you?" He looked at her and cocked an eyebrow. "Once I'm out there, you're coming with me when I do them at _least_ three times a week. Probably a lot more."

"...You know I can say you're out of your mind for that plan still, right?" she asked, but she was blushing faintly.

"And you just go ahead and enjoy that while you can." They'd reached the front of the line, and Duncan flashed the man his wristband and a smirk. "Hey, man, I'll give you twenty bucks if the wheel 'just happens' to break for awhile when we're at the top.

"I'll give you thirty if you just ignore him," Courtney cut in flatly.

"Just ignore that," Duncan said in his smoothest tone. "She's only carrying plastic anyway."

"I _will_ leave right now and find an ATM if you don't stop trying to act like a swine," she said, glaring at him.

"Why Princess, I'm hurt. Haven't I been a perfect gentleman today?"

She stared at him with a dumbfounded look, like she had no idea where to even start responding to the question. "Not by any _possible_ definition of the word. Should I find somewhere to buy you a dictionary?"

"Whatever, just forget it," he said to the man, and stepped into the ferris wheel cart.

o 0 O 0 o

When they left the fair again Duncan was wearing a jester hat and Courtney had a giant neon-green stuffed rabbit and a box full of fair treats to bring to everyone back at the resort. He'd told her that it would just be cold and nasty by the time they got back, but she never could resist an opportunity to raise people's opinions of her. Plus, it wasn't like he could deny she was right when she pointed out that even if nobody else wanted any she could just bring it with her the next day and Owen would happily eat every last crumb.

They had been recognized a few more times, but apparently the first girl had done a _very_ good job of spreading the word about the 'body doubles' to the local fan community. Almost every time it looked like someone was going to come rushing up to them, another person would intercept, and if they listened hard enough they'd be able to make out that person passing on the story about how they weren't the _real_ Courtney and Duncan. Luckily the few times someone didn't get the message they proved to be just as easily fooled as the first girl. Duncan wasn't really sure if that said good things about their acting skills, or bad things about the type of fan who was willing to rush up to people who were clearly on a date shrieking their heads off.

Okay, scratch that. He _knew_ those fans were idiots. He just hoped they were the minority.

They were looking for a nice place to have dinner now, or Courtney was while he walked along thinking. He could admit that he was starting to get a tiny bit worried about her challenge, although he was careful not to show it and was still confident that he'd work it out before midnight. The problem was that every time he thought of a job he thought was likely he'd realize that it would take up too much time for someone who probably spent a million hours a week doing things like taking extra classes and lessons, and participating in extracurricular activities. Or it would be another 'job' that was really volunteer work, or there'd be some other reason it couldn't possibly be right. It was at once annoying as hell to admit to himself that he couldn't read her as easily as she could read him, and an intriguing puzzle to try working out.

He kept coming back to the way she'd phrased the dare; 'you'll be able to figure out what I do when we're in town.' Not 'you'll have time to think about it' but that he'd be _able_ to, and in the town specifically instead of on their hike or back at the hotel. He couldn't shake the feeling that that was important. And then that he wasn't allowed to look for the answer on the internet, which implied that it was a big enough deal that he'd be able to find it there if he tried. And it wouldn't be something that would just had an article or two somewhere online because it was important in her hometown but nowhere else, or he wouldn't be able to find out in the town they were in.

The guess that had first gotten stuck in his head was that she had a CD out with her violin music on it, but he knew that couldn't be right. There was the time problem again, he couldn't really picture her deciding that the life of a musician was for her, and he was positive that she would have mentioned that she was a professional when she was convincing their team to let her play in the talent show if it was true.

Then, when he turned to look at a restaurant she pointed out to him, he spotted a store a few doors down from it.

And he _knew_.

"Yeah, that looks great, Princess," he told her. "Look, can you go in an get a table for us on your own? I just remembered something I should do."

"Um, sure..." she said, giving him a questioning look but not asking. She probably thought he was running off to do something illegal, and didn't want to be an accomplice. "Is a booth okay?"

"Yeah, whatever you want," he replied, and walked her to the door before he took off. As soon as she was indoors and couldn't watch where he was going, he broke into a run for the shop.

It was easy, much easier than he'd expected, to find what he was looking for. His wallet winced a little at the price--he was pretty sure that unless the restaurant was a lot cheaper than he expected he'd need to ask Courtney to pay for dinner with her card and then just give her the rest of his money to cover part of it--but he wanted the proof that he'd completely figured her out in his hands when he gave her his answer.

When he returned to the restaurant and went in to find her, he was glad to see that she'd chosen to sit with her back to the door instead of watching for him to come back. It allowed him to pull the book he'd bought out of his shopping bag, sneak up behind her, open to a random page, and start to read.

"'When choosing your clothes, always be aware of what your attire says about you,'" he read out loud, leaning against the back of her seat. "'Keep in mind that your clothing is not an appropriate place to state your opinion if you're attempting to make a good impression on people who might someday help you on your road to success. Even something as seemingly innocuous as wearing a shirt supporting your favorite sports team might taint the opinion of someone who would be able to offer you a valuable leg-up in the world against you, if they happen to be fans of the rival team.' And _that_ would be a little selection from _Total Triumph for Teens_ book one, _A People Person Is a Successful Person_." He opened the book to the back cover and flashed Courtney the photo of herself that was plastered above the short 'about the author' blurb.

She stared at him, and if he hadn't already realized Courtney wanted him to win more than she was letting on it would have been impossible not to figure out from the smile slowing spreading across her face. "You did it," she said quietly.

He grinned back, and slide into the booth beside her. "Let's see now... what do I want you to look for when you're apartment hunting for me?"

o 0 O 0 o

The trip back to the resort seemed to go more quickly than the trip away from it, in the way that return trips always seemed faster. It was still faintly light out when he recognized a massive gnarled tree that he was pretty sure was about halfway between the resort and the spot they'd slept for the night. It was only a few minutes after that Duncan heard a sound that he recognized from hundreds of video games and movies as the sound of a gun's safety being flicked, something he'd always assumed you couldn't really hear from any sort of distance.

He stopped dead in his tracks, snagging Courtney, who obviously had no idea what he was doing judging by the startled noise she made, by the wrist and pulling her behind him as he turned in the direction the sound had come from and searched for the source.

To his surprise, what he found was Chris who was stepping out from around some bushes, not a gun in sight. "So you guys are heading back on your own?" he asked when he was in front of them. "Awwwwwwe-some. You were getting us a _little_ worried there."

"What the hell are _you_ doing out here?" Duncan asked, staring at him.

"Other producers sent me to hunt you down," he replied. "Man, you two are _lucky_ I caught you heading back. We _might_ be able to forgive you for so majorly breaking the rules since you weren't just planning on running off."

"Oh _please_, Chris," Courtney said, coming out from behind Duncan and beginning to advance on the host. "Everybody knows by now that your stupid show doesn't follow any rules."

"I think you'll find that your contracts say otherwise," Chris said smoothly.

"You broke my contract first when you threw me out because of Harold's cheating!"

"Wait," Duncan said, grabbing her shoulder to stop her in place. "_Harold's_ the reason you were kicked off the island?"

They both stopped to give him a look like he'd said something completely stupid. "Boy," Chris said, "you really _haven't_ been paying attention to anything but your girlfriend here since you left, have you?"

"Forget about that," Courtney quickly snapped, pulling away from Duncan and stalking towards Chris once more. "You. I'm going to _kill_ you for that green jelly thing!"

"Oh yeah, about that," Chris said, completely unfazed judging by his face and voice although he stepped out of her path. "We're real sorry. _Totally_ didn't expect you to freak out that much. It screwed us up too; you were _supposed_ to have the lightest punishment. Still haven't figured out how to top it for Bridgette and Leshawna now."

"Ignorance is not an excuse!" she snapped at him. "The next time I talk to my lawyer, I'm adding emotional damages to my lawsuit."

"Of course you are," he said, not seeming the least bit worried about the threat. "And if you two had screwed up our big finale tomorrow by not showing up, we'd have sued you right back. Might wanna keep that in mind."

Duncan knew that he should start in with the threats too, after all just a few days ago he'd wanted the smirky bastard dead probably a lot more honestly than Courtney did and, unlike her, Chris was actually _afraid_ of him. But he'd been left in way too good a mood by their day to really get a proper rage going on, and when he stopped to think about it he could admit that the past week wouldn't have been half as interesting if he hadn't had to win her over all over again. At least once he was totally sure he'd be able to do it.

So he settled for snorting, and looking around the area again, half searching for whatever Chris had used to get out there, half still looking for someone with a gun although he was starting to figure he'd just imagined the noise. "Yeah, whatever. You got a car or something around here you were supposed to drag us back in?"

"Or something. But now that I know you're going back on your own, there's not really any need to give you guys a lift, now is there?"

"Cut the crap. We all know you're not gonna just leave us here in case we decide we want to take off after all, so where's the ride?"

"Well, if you insist..."

o 0 O 0 o

Duncan ended up wishing that he hadn't insisted. Chris' 'or something' turned out to be a stupid dinky ATV with the world's dodgiest looking sidecar rigged up to it and no helmets for anyone but himself, meeting right up with the ever-so-rigorous safety standards they'd come to expect from the show. Of course, Chris probably would have sprung for something better if he'd been smart enough to realize that Duncan would be forcing him to be the one riding in the car, no matter what he'd had planned. After all, Duncan wasn't about to ride back to the resort with his arms wrapped around Chris' waist, and having Courtney be the one clinging to him was even more out of the question.

Once they were on their way he quickly decided that there wasn't much he couldn't forgive the host over for giving him the chance to feel Courtney squeezing him to her as tightly as she could, her face pressed tightly into his back between his shoulder blades so she could try to ignore the world flying by around them.

By the time they reached the Playa des Losers night had fallen, and Duncan and Courtney were a little surprised to see that pretty much everyone there was waiting around to ask them about where the hell they'd been all that time. Their friends they'd expected, but people like Ezekiel and Justin were a surprise. Duncan guessed that they were all just desperate to hear anything about the outside world.

But by then they were both tired; it was early to go to bed, but sleeping in the woods again the night before hadn't exactly lead to the best nights sleep in the world, and they'd had a full day. Courtney just held out her box of treats for them to fight over, then they excused themselves. Or, Courtney excused herself at least. Duncan just grunted and shoved his way through the crowd.

"Aren't you gonna give me a good-night kiss? That's how a date's supposed to end, you know," he said when they reached her door.

"In your dreams," she said, unlocking it and letting herself in. She didn't say anything when he followed after her.

"Well, Princess, you're the one who told me I'm no gentlemen. What if I just stole one?"

"You wouldn't do that," she said with complete certainly, gathering up her pajamas and heading into her bathroom to change in privacy.

"Why would you say that?" he asked, honestly puzzled about what he'd ever done to make her sound like she had such complete faith that he wouldn't pull anything.

She didn't say anything for awhile, and he occupied himself by kicking off his shoes and going back into the hall to collect the pillow and blanket lying next to her door. The blanket he tossed into her closet, the pillow on her bed next to her own. He'd never admit to _anyone_ that he felt butterflies in his stomach as he waited to see what her response would be to it, but he knew that it was completely true that it was better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission.

She answered his question when she came out of the bathroom dressed for bed, "Because you know that I'd never forgive you if you got _too_ grabby without my permission, and you've made it perfectly clear this week that you wouldn't be happy if I refused to have anything to do with you." She yawned hugely then, and crawled into her bed without making any mention of the pillow. As far as Duncan was concerned, that was as good as an invitation.

"Okay, maybe you're right about that, Princess," he said, climbing into the bed beside her as she leaned over to turn off her lamp, and draping his arm across her waist when she settled back down. It wasn't that different from the night before, except for being much more comfortable.

She had lapsed into silence without responding to him, which he figured was a good sign. If she was all upset about his actions he knew that at the very least she'd be screaming into his ear loudly enough that it'd ring for an hour, and more likely than that he'd be lying on the floor already with one hell of a bruise forming on some part of his body. Instead she seemed content to just try to go to sleep.

He _knew_ that he shouldn't break the silence. He knew that if he had a brain in his head he'd just keep his mouth shut and drift off himself.

He knew that poking at her was always a hell of a lot more fun than doing the smart thing.

He leaned his head forward enough to press his face into her hair, and smirked against her scalp. "_Told_ you it was just a matter of time before this was my room too."

She went completely stiff in his arms for a minute, but still didn't pull away or shove him off the bed. Then, in slow increments, her body relaxed again. "Just shut up and go to sleep," she mumbled tiredly.

"Whatever you say, Princess," he said, and pulled her to him a little more closely as he closed his eyes for the night.


	11. Can't Give Up Now

Courtney woke up first again the next morning. What she couldn't help but think of as the _last_ morning, grand plans for cross-country moves notwithstanding.

Sometime during the night--whether by design or actually innocently in his sleep Courtney didn't know--Duncan had shifted further down the bed. Now his head was resting on her stomach, one of his arms draped across her waist, the other stretched up with its hand trapped beneath her shoulder, one of his legs curled around one of hers. One side of her pajama shirt had ridden up a little and she could feel his breath against the skin of her hip, a new type of intimacy that felt strangely comfortable. At least so long as he stayed asleep, and didn't ruin it with some crude comment.

Any other day she would have moved away before he could wake up. In her mind she had drawn a line in the sand in the same instant that she'd forgiven him a few days before, that she would enjoy his company but not let things get physical between them again. Not when they were so close to saying goodbye. If he'd been eliminated a few weeks earlier, maybe. If the circumstances had been different and she hadn't spent most of the time they'd been there together angry at him. But she wasn't about to set herself up so leaving him would be harder when they only had days together. Sure, he could _say_ they'd be seeing each other again soon, could even believe it, but Courtney herself was the only sixteen-year-old she'd ever really trust to follow through with a major decision. Even if they sounded as serious as he had when he'd let her in on his plan.

If he went through with moving at all he would still get home and realize that they'd only really known each other for a little more than a month, even if it felt like ages. That relationships built around strenuous circumstances rarely lasted long after that stress was removed (she ignored the part of her mind that tried pointing out that she'd never been as happy to be with him as she had been the day before, when things were the closest they'd been to normal and stress-free since the day they'd met). It wouldn't take long before it finally hit him that she shouldn't even be a factor he considered when he was making a life-altering decision and that he should find somewhere where he knew he'd be able to get a good job or where the cost of living was cheaper instead.

Just letting him sleep beside her had been pressing it too far, but in the woods they'd needed the extra warmth (and _she'd_ needed something that wasn't dirt to rest her head on), and after she'd allowed it once it had seemed pointless to kick him out of her room. Letting him twine around her like he was ivy and she was his trellis was pushing it much, much, too far, at least when his head was positioned so he only needed to move it inches in either direction to end up somewhere it _definitely_ wasn't allowed to be.

But it _was_ the last day, and she could be weak enough to enjoy the moment and soak up the feel of him just until he woke up. Moving carefully so as not to wake him she gave into the temptation to raise her hand to his head and lightly stroke his hair with more than the quick ruffle that was all she was willing to give it when he was awake. The texture had been a bit of surprise each time she touched it. Between being bleached light enough to take such a bright color and then being dyed who-knew-how-many times since he'd first come up with his signature hairstyle, she would have expected every green hair on his head to be dried out. It wasn't like he was the type of person who would use conditioner; she half suspected that he wasn't even the type who'd use _shampoo_ instead of just scrubbing his hair and body with the same bar of soap. But instead of what she expected it was thick and smooth and slid easily between her fingers, though she wouldn't really go so far as to call it soft. The shaved section was different than it had felt the first time she'd touched it, on the island. Back then it had been prickly against the base of her palm, but he'd obviously been as lazy about keeping it shaved down as she had been about keeping her ends cut straight, and with the added length it reminded her of nothing so much as rubbing her hand across velvet. A comparison that she knew would annoy him, and so filed away for possible future teasing.

She was content to stay like that until he woke up, half dozing herself as her hand fell into a steady rhythm, caressing from his hairline to the base of his skull then tracing back up along his hairline again to come around full circle. And nothing about it felt uncomfortable, even though she knew that it really really should be.

Soon enough he started to stir, and she instantly stopped the movement of her hand before he woke up enough to realize what she'd been doing. She let it settle over the knob on the top of his spine, realizing that if she removed it from him altogether any position it ended up in would make it awkwardly obvious that she was deliberately trying to avoid touching him. She considered feigning sleep so she could pass off even that touch as an unconscious movement and he could save his pride by repositioning himself, just like he had in Bridgette and Leshawna's movie, so by the time she 'woke up' he could pretend that he'd never been snuggling her like she was a teddy bear to begin with, but she decided against it. When their time left together was down to just hours it didn't seem worth wasting any of it on games.

"Nngh... Princess?" he mumbled before he'd even opened his eyes, and she was surprised to see that this time he didn't seem at all bothered by their positions; if anything he was pulling her closer. Maybe it was the fact that it was just the two of them there, instead of a half-dozen teammates, a bunch of cameras, and the entire viewing audience. Or maybe it was just because his brain had yet to wake up enough to really realize he'd once again turned into a cuddler, a theory backed up by the sleepy slur his voice had turned into. "You jus' doin' somethi'?"

"No," she lied. "There's not much I _can_ do with you holding me down like this."

"Huh?" he asked, and finally blinked one eye open to peer up at her. "Huh." She could _see_ his mind becoming fully aware now, in the way his features grew harder (it had nothing to do with her, she was sure; he'd just never allow himself to risk looking soft and had no idea how to manage something in between) and his lips curved into their habitual smirk. "Shouldn't you be screaming your head off and shoving me off you right about now, Babe?"

She raised an eyebrow at him. "Do you _want_ me to?"

"Nah, this is cool. Although..." Suddenly the leg wound around hers was moving, but instead of pulling away like she expected he pushed himself up and swung it over her to straddle her thighs. The hand under her shoulder twisted until it was palm-up then began easily lifting her into a sitting position even though she was sure it had to be numb after being pinned under her for so long. "You wouldn't give me my good night kiss, Princess, so how about one for a good morning?"

For just a second she considered allowing it. It would only be one kiss, could that really hurt so much? Then she remembered again, the last day, the last hours, and knew that yes it would. Anything that brought them closer together than they already were would. So, with just inches left to spare, she raised her hand and covered his mouth with it. "No way. Haven't you ever heard of 'morning breath?'"

He could be completely id-driven if he wanted to, but that just meant that she needed to work twice as hard to keep them safe. It was better that way for both of them.

He sighed against her palm, and rolled onto his side beside her. "I hope you know the playing hard-to-get thing is starting to get a little old, Darling."

"'Hard-to-get?' Duncan, we've slept together the past two nights in a row, and until just a second ago I was letting you keep half your body wrapped around me. By what definition is _that_ hard-to-get?" He started opening his mouth to answer, but she held up a hand to stop it from coming and pushed herself out of her bed. "Wait, never mind. I'm sure any answer you give will remind me that you're a pig, and then I'll need to be mad at you, so let's just skip it shall we? Now I need to go take a shower before breakfast."

As she set to work picking out clothes for herself she heard him rolling over in bed, and after a second he said, "Hey... you kept it."

"Hmm?" She glanced over to see what she was looking at, and realized that it was the skull he'd carved for her. Since the day he'd given it to her she'd kept it propped up against her alarm clock, where she'd see it first thing after waking up every morning. "Well, yeah. I said that I would, didn't I?"

"Yeah, but I didn't see it when I was in here before. Figured you must have chucked it."

"I considered it, after seeing that tape," she admitted. "But I decided against it, just in case I regretted it one day." She kept it to herself that in her mind that theoretical 'one day' had been sometime years into the future when she'd stopped being upset about the Heather thing and might want it as a reminder of a good day that she'd had once upon a time. It had been easy, then, to condemn him to being nothing more in her life than just a possible future good memory.

"Ha," he laughed, and sounded stupidly pleased at the confession, "even then you knew you'd end up forgiving me."

"Something like that," she said, and disappeared into the bathroom.

o 0 O 0 o

Camp Wawanakwa was, if anything, even grosser than she remembered. She knew that the proper thing to do before they were called in for the final challenge would probably be to wander around a little and refresh her memories of 'the good times', but she could hardly think of anything that would count. It didn't seem worth it to wax nostalgic about her last day there when Duncan by her side was the strongest possible reminder she could have of it, and practically everything before that had melded into a long string of annoyances in her mind. So instead she just waited around until it was time for Chris to welcome them back.

On their way in Duncan grabbed her arm to guide her towards one of the sets of bleachers. "We're cheering for Owen."

"What? We don't _need_ to be on the same side, you know," she said, making a face at him. "And I hardly even know Owen."

"You hardly even know Gwen either, Princess. Come on, the chubby gas bag needs all the support he can get. You know as well as I do that he's gonna get his ass kicked unless they're deciding this whole thing with a pie-eating contest."

"Why do you even care?" she asked, sitting down even though she knew that she really shouldn't give in without more of an argument. "Aren't you still angry at him for losing you the game?"

"Nah, I'm over it" he said airily. "The way I see it, if he hadn't screwed me over then you'd still be pissed off at me now and I'd be totally out of time to fix it. So I guess I can call it even."

She stared at him, unsure of how to even respond to that. He'd said it so easily, like it didn't even matter that he'd pretty much just told her that being in her good books was equal to the hundred thousand dollars he might have won if things had gone differently earlier that week. She told herself that he probably hadn't meant it that way, probably wasn't even thinking about the money and was just talking about the chance to still be playing the game, but it was still about the most flattering compliment she'd ever received. And she had no idea how to react to it that wouldn't be either too honest or too false.

So instead she focused on what was happening in the game. When the two finalists each made a speech about what they'd do with the money she started to push herself to her feet. "I should really be on Gwen's side," she said as practically every other camper apparently had the opposite reaction to the speeches. "I can't be cheering for someone who wants to waste the prize on a _yacht party_ over someone who actually plans to put the money to good use."

"_Relax_, Sweetheart," he said, tugging her back down onto her seat once more. "Gwen's a big girl. She's not gonna freak out if one more person isn't on her side."

And then it was too late to change, because the final challenge was beginning. She had no idea why Duncan was so insistent on staying on Owen's side, because it quickly became clear that he was no more interested in actually helping out than Courtney herself was. They both just skipped paying most of it any attention all together, instead wandering over to where they'd get a good view of the final stretch.

"Oh, _man_," Duncan said, watching as in the distance Owen was boosted up the flagpole. "Glad I'm not helping them with that. They're just asking for gassy death from above." He glanced at her and grinned slightly. "Bet you anything that if _I'd_ been in this I would've been up one of those poles faster than either of them. Remind me some day when we're out of here and I'll show you."

There he went again, talking like he didn't have a single doubt that they'd be dating in the future. She was actually a little happy that the results of their bet left her unable to call him insane. It was a nice dream to have, for however long it lasted.

And now Owen and Gwen were close to the finish, setting foot on Chris' very last hellish deathtrap, and for the first time it _really_ hit Courtney that this might well be the end. The dream might go on for a month or two, but as likely as not the reality would be over practically as soon as one of them crossed the finish line. Suddenly it no longer matter who deserved the prize more and she was earnestly hoping for Owen to pull ahead, so at least his party would drag things out a little bit longer.

Duncan was giving her a speech about the joys of danger in response to a comment she hardly even remembered making, her thoughts and her mouth not quite connected as securely as usual at the moment. She half listened to what he had to say as she thought about it herself.

Danger... that was the reason she was trying to keep some distance between them this time, wasn't it? Fear of the danger that added closeness would make it hurt worse when they were separated than she already knew it would. The danger of losing herself in him again, this time without the convenient excuse of exhaustion and stress and a full month of constant insanity to explain away the effect he had on her.

But if it was already starting to hurt when they hadn't even reached 'good-bye' it was hard to believe that the added pain would really make that much of a difference. And even if she never faltered from her path again during her entire life, people would still look at her and remember her as the girl who went mad over a delinquent boy on national television. How much more was there left for her to be afraid of?

If there hadn't been any danger she didn't know that her heart would be pounding quite as quickly as she reached out to grab his shirt. If he had been the type of safe preppy boy she should have been interested in she didn't think her breath would have caught a little when she saw his eyes start to widen the instant she touched him, shifting into the sucker-punched look Leshawna and Bridgette had made so sure she'd be able to recognize when she saw it again. She moved as quickly as she could, before her brain had time to catch up and remember why this was a very bad idea. _Okay_, she thought as she dragged him down to kiss him so hard that she hoped she'd be able to still feel it every time she closed her eyes for days after he was gone. _I guess I can see how danger can be a turn on._

They might only have minutes left, depending on how quickly Chris shipped them all back home once the results were in. She couldn't believe she'd been planning on wasting them.

When she pulled away she found herself at loss for words again. What was there to say? She couldn't tell him that she loved him because she didn't, although she suspected that maybe someday the possibility for it existed. And with him being so serious when he said they'd see each other again soon it didn't seem right to explain that the reason that she'd finally given into him out of nowhere _then_ after avoiding it for days was that it might be their last chance.

In the end instead of any explanations or emotional declarations that would only ring false and make both of them uncomfortable she just settled for one of the teasing arguments that always came easiest between them. "You're still not my type, you know," she said, and hoped that he'd read between the lines, to where she meant 'but I don't even care anymore.'

And she knew he understood, what they were if not necessarily what she'd meant, when he fired back an insult of his own that was just as free of venom, and she couldn't hold back a smile when he pulled her to him to kiss her again.

It was strange, and it was probably a little twisted, but it was the way they worked. Just this one last time (if last it was) she could give into it completely again.


	12. Can't Stop, Addicted to the Shindig

Hours later and Courtney still found it hard to believe that Owen was the one who'd won. Won by the same quirk that had lost Duncan the game just a few days earlier even.

She found it even harder to believe that he'd somehow already pulled together his yacht party. She was _sure_ that there was supposed to be some sort of time gap between a person winning a reality show and the time they got their prize. She certainly hadn't received her pittance of a consolation gift yet. But once the results were in, the cameras had stopped rolling, and Chris and Chef had dragged themselves back onto the shore, Chris had made a few calls and the next thing they knew there was a yacht floating in Lake Wawanakwa.

She suspected that it was just a plot for the producers to be able to keep a large hunk of the prize money. The moment they were all out of sight, Chris was probably going to laugh himself sick over the lucky break he and the rest of the producers had been given in a winner whose big plan for the cash was just having a party.

"Hey there, Courtney, got a sec?" she heard in a skaterboy drawl behind her. Speak of the devil...

"Not for you," she said, turning to glare at him. She'd only just snuck away to a quiet room on the ship to try and shake a headache that had been forming from the loud music at the party. She didn't really need to replace the pounding in her head with a pain in her ass. "In case you hadn't noticed, we're free now. I don't need to put up with you any longer."

"Funny thing! That'd be what I wanted to talk to you about!" He produced a thick sheaf of papers seemingly out of nowhere and waved them at her.

Even though she knew she had nothing to worry about, she could feel her stomach drop. "You can't threaten me with my contract, Chris. Unlike everyone else here, I _read_ it before I signed. As long as I don't tell anyone about the ending until the finale airs, and go to any talk show interviews you line up for me for the rest of the summer, you have no hold on me anymore."

"Yeee-aaah, that _would_ matter, if this was your Total Drama _Island_ contract."

"What?"

He flashed her his best brightly blank game show host smile and held the contract in front of her. "Take a look-see for yourself," he said, tapping one particular string of text.

She leaned forward to read, not really caring about whatever game he was playing but knowing that he wouldn't stop bothering her if she didn't go along with it. "Total Drama... Action?" she read, then looked up at him sharply. "Chris, what is this?"

He looked as pleased with himself as the cat that caught the canary. "I've got one word for you: _sequel_. And the other producers and I have been talking, and we want _you_ to be one of the contestants."

"No."

"Of course, you'll have to drop your little lawsuit..."

"_No!_"

"...but we're willing to throw in an extra invincibility task just for you to make up for Harold cheating you out of the game the first time. You can ask for your shot at it any time you want, and nobody else'll know about this little advantage if you don't tell them."

"Why are you even still talking?" Courtney asked, narrowing her eyes at him. "I don't _want_ to be on your insane show anymore, and I'm certainly not going to drop my lawsuit for the chance! Admit it, the only reason you're even offering me a spot in the show is because you know that if I take you to court I'll win."

"Nah, we're only offering you a spot because the viewers like watching you and Duncan, and _we_ like the ratings we get when we give them what they want."

"Oh, please. Duncan's not going to come back either. He's already won a big enough prize this time through, and by the time you're ready to start filming a second season his period on parole will be over with so he'll no longer need the show as a way to escape from his parole officer."

"Funny you should say that," Chris said, and suddenly his smile reminded her of nothing so much as one of his sharks. "You see, now that the show's over we're supposed to be sending his officer a list of any and all crimes we caught him committing during the course of the show. You can _probably_ imagine that it's not a short list, and that's not even getting into that _major_ breach of contract you committed yesterday. Your little date is a pretty big deal if you know that his contract stipulates that during the course of the show we might as well have been his parole officer. Now, I'm not a big 'rule man' myself, but our lawyers are and they've let me know that he'll probably be going back to juvie for a good long visit after we hand over the list. _If_ we give them the right one."

Courtney could feel the blood draining from her face. "What are you getting at, Chris?"

"See, we knew _Duncan_ wouldn't come back just because of that, but then we thought 'Hey, what if we tried it on someone _else_ who wouldn't want to see him locked away? Say, someone he'd probably follow right back onto the show so we could kill two birds with one stone?' And that's where you come in." He held the contract out for her to take, then crossed his arms across his chest and leaned back against a wall. "We didn't really _want_ to do this--it'll be our asses on the line too if this gets out after all--but you sign this contract and the list we send in will be edited down enough to keep your boyfriend there out of the big house."

"You're trying to blackmail me," she said, doing her best to keep her tone calm and composed. Getting upset never helped in a business discussion.

"Blackmail's such an _ugly_ word. It's not like anything's gonna happen to _you_ if you don't sign, and Duncan'll just be reaping what he sowed, am I right?" She was starting to find it maddening, the way his smile wasn't changing at all. "Besides, Courtney, it's not you could _prove_ we tried to blackmail you to anyone, not without spilling that Duncan should be locked up yourself!"

Courtney's eyes skimmed the first page of the contract, looking for some sort of out she could use that wouldn't be used against Duncan. "This says filming will start next month! Summer break is over then, you can't expect me to--"

"Gotcha covered on that one," he broke in, apparently already prepared for that line of thought. "We'll have a tutor around for all you kids whenever it isn't a challenge day."

That would have been more comforting if she didn't already know the way the show worked. "...The tutor's going to be Chef, isn't it?"

"Now now, Courtney, you know we wouldn't use anyone who wasn't properly authorized to be an on-set teacher. We could get in serious trouble with the Ontario Ministry of Education if we didn't!"

"Right," she said, rolling her eyes, "because you've all proven yourselves to be so worried about sticking to the letter of the law in the past."

"Glad to see you've noticed," he said, and then turned to the door. "I'll just leave you to think that over, and we'll have someone pick it up from you when you leave the yacht. Better make your decision by then! Now, I've got a few more of those to pass out."

When he was gone she suddenly found herself wanting air a lot more than privacy and left the room herself in search of it. She was a little surprised that she didn't see Chris as she made her way to the nearest deck area; he must have been moving incredibly fast to be out of sight by the time she walked out into the hall. Not that she cared, she didn't really want to say another word to him anyway.

Once out in the open air she leaned against the railing surrounding the deck and began reading the contract in depth, doing her best to ignore Gwen and Trent making out where she could easily see them one level below her. For the most part it was exactly the same as the contract she'd signed for the first season. The phrasing used throughout it was more twisted and convoluted than in any other contract she'd ever signed, but it was easy enough for her to follow after the time she'd spent pouring over the first one with a contract attorney, making the man explain in detail every last section she didn't feel she understood well enough on her own. The rules about elimination remained the same, still making it completely obvious that they didn't have a leg to stand on when (now if) she took them to court, which actually made her opinion of them rise the tiniest bit. They could easily have changed them just in case the same thing happened again.

The only changes (aside from the prize amount) were the couple of pages added just for her, detailing the deal Chris had offered. Lawsuit, invincibility, Duncan's safety, all there in black and white, although the last part was so vaguely worded that only someone who knew what it was about would understand the contents, a precaution they'd needed to take to guard their own backs she supposed.

She was focusing on those pages, turning the offer over and over in her mind, when suddenly arms looped around her from behind. "Man, I still can't believe that boulder thing worked," Duncan said against her ear, and she could feel his head nodding towards Gwen and Trent down below. "Even _Lindsay's_ plan wasn't that stupid. If I ever try something like that, I won't blame you for dumping me."

"I'll keep that in mind," she said, closing the contract before he could get a glance at the part she was reading, even though she knew he wouldn't be able to make anything of it.

"Chris tossed one of those at you too?" he asked. His chin was digging into her shoulder, his body pressed closely to hers, and it was still a little strange to her to think that there was really no reason to push him away anymore.

"Yes. He cornered me and gave me his sells pitch just a little while ago," she said. Then she turned her head a tiny bit, just enough to look at him out of the corner of her eye. "Are you thinking of doing it?"

"Haven't decided yet," he said, and she could feel his whole body shifting against her when he shrugged. "Can't say I'm that interested in dealing with Chris' bullshit again, and I've already got enough cash to keep me set. They'll probably be trying to kick me out before I get far enough to get anything decent this time anyway." Then his arms tightened a little bit more around her. "But I can think of a reason or two I might wanna come back."

Though he kept his voice flat, like he was just making an off-handed statement, she recognized it as a question. She was glad that he wasn't in a position where he could see her face as she gave it serious consideration.

Going back on the show again was the last thing in the world that she wanted. She hated the way it twisted her expectations of the world, the way it laughed in the face of every usually infallible trick or tactic for getting ahead in the world. She hated the way all the other player could be such _teenagers_, who would happily throw away any type of good strategy in favor of striking out at anyone they didn't like even on the rare days when the show itself wasn't messing with them in any way it could. She hated the way she never felt fully rested while she was on it, without it even being the satisfying exhaustion that came from working hard at a job worth doing. And she hated that she was absolutely positive that she'd get there and find out that Chef _was_ properly authorized to be an on-set teacher. Chris hadn't actually said no, after all.

If her own desires had been the only consideration, she would never go back. There wasn't even a question of it.

But it wasn't just her.

His arms were resting on the railing in front of her, and she slowly raised one of her hands to cover one of his, curling her fingers down to link them with his. His words from their walk in the woods came back to her as clearly as if he was whispering them into her ear right then; 'Wonder what else I could 'blackmail' you into to keep me out of trouble.'

It was probably a good thing for her continued sanity that he didn't know exactly how far she'd just realized she was willing to go for that goal.

"Do you have a pen?" she asked quietly. "I need something to sign with."

He turned his head towards her, and she could feel his lips curving into a smile against her neck. "All right, Princess: me and you in the final two. What do you say?"

She twisted in his arms to face him, loop her own arms around his neck, and smile at him as brightly as she could manage. It was easier than she would have expected, when he was the one she was looking at. "And may the best Bass win.

End

To be continued in Total... _Drama... __**Action!**_

...The actual show, that is. Here's hoping the preview's misleading and the original cast list rumors are right. Thank you all for reading and for all your comments (and to SushiChica: you finally get the chapter title you were waiting for *g*)! I hope that you all enjoyed the ride; I know that I had fun writing it.


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